Nutrition
The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” - Ann Wigmore
It’s undeniable that a well-balanced diet goes hand in hand with a healthy lifestyle. What you choose to eat, and what you choose not to eat, are factors in warding off many leading chronic illnesses and diseases.
Food choices make a huge impact on how you feel today, tomorrow and what the future holds in terms of promoting and maintaining good health. The right diet can help fight conditions and illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer and obesity among many others.
My approach is not to prescribe calorie based diets, it’s a holistic, systematic, comprehensive and evidence based plan that through eating real food with the right nutritional supplements and lifestyle choices to enable you to make significant lifelong changes in your health with me as your guide.
My nutrition philosophy is centered on a diet of high quality, fresh natural produce and wholefoods. Micronutrient dense, low pesticide and organic where possible, seasonal animal and plant foods every day, together with bone broths, pro-biotic rich foods and healthy fats. Nothing processed, synthetic or artificial, “pharmed”, modified or adulterated with pesticides or hazardous chemicals or packaged in plastics.
Nothing that has existed for less than 100 years in our food system or that my grandparents wouldn’t have recognised!
Adverse food reactions, food allergies and food intolerances are prevalent in around 20% of Australia’s population. Functional medicine and specific elimination and rotation diets such as FODMAPS, SIBO diet, lactose free or gluten free diets are often therapeutically considered in naturopathic treatments for gastrointestinal symptoms and distress. Researchers have also identified their role in conditions distant from the gut, including immune, metabolic, neuro-immunology and hormonal conditions.
Nutritional medicine is a system of addressing underlying causes of illness, helping clients overcome long standing health conditions through adopting healthy eating, addressing nutrient deficiencies, increasing nutrient absorption, eliminating ‘bugs’ (parasites and unbalanced gut flora), optimising genetics and enabling the body to heal.
In some instances, nutritional supplements with vitamins and minerals is required. The dosing however, is within “therapeutic range”, and would often require prescribing a nutrient in a specific dose and form and the use of high doses often in acute illness. This practice is often described as orthomolecular medicine, and is increasingly supported in medical literature.
Evidence based treatment will often commence with vitamin assessments to identify the key nutrients that have the greatest impact on your wellbeing and long-term health. This enables the highest level of accuracy and safety of prescribing with practitioner grade supplements that are clinically relevant to you.
Genetic testing is now more accessible and affordable for patients. It can take the guess work from your health and provide you with genetically-guided diet, exercise & lifestyle advice, including food sensitivities, your ability to absorb vitamins and how you respond to exercise.
It is perhaps less known that various genetic polymorphisms, diets and lifestyle circumstances can contribute to the availability of these essential co-enzymes and nutrients.
The interpretation of your unique biochemistry with the aim to integrate pathology and gene tests to your diagnosed conditions, medications, hormone profiles, dietary requirements and lifestyle choices can enrich our understanding of your presenting concerns.
