Dr Ng Ai Kah who has just joined the Department this month will be presenting her talk on “Muscle strength and its relationship with dietary intake from the MyHeART study” at the Breakfast@UMHealth Live Webinar Series: Episode 36 which will be held on Wednesday, 19 October 2022 through Zoom platform.

Dr Ng Ai Kah graduated with her BSc (Hon) Dietetics (UKM, Malaysia), MSc in Public Health (IMU, Malaysia) and Doctor of Philosophy (UM, Malaysia). Currently, she is the senior lecturer, Social & Preventive Medicine, the Faculty of Medicine, UM. She has 14 years of working experience in the field of Nutrition & Dietetics and Food Services. She was a clinical and food service dietitian before joining the academia for the past 11 years. Prior to joining UM, she was Programme Director, Clinical Coordinator and Lecturer at, Nutrition & Dietetics Division, at International Medical University. Her research focus is in the area of dietetics, food services, food safety and quality assurance and Adolescent Health Nutrition. She is also actively involved in the Malaysian Dietitians’ Association (MDA) and serves as the current Honorary Treasurer of MDA.

Muscle strength and its relationship with dietary intake from the MyHeART study

The presentation covers the results of the longitudinal data of the Malaysian Health and Adolescents Longitudinal Research Team (MyHeART) study conducted on adolescents. It indicates that protein intake with physical activity score may influence the male hand grip strength of multi-ethnic Malaysian adolescents. However, the inverse relationship between energy intake and hand grip strength was found among female adolescents. The result also indicated a structured, tailored intervention should be planned to improve adolescents’ overall muscular health.