NAVIGATING YOU TO REACH “YOUR” OPTIMAL HEALTH – We are all different, we all have different goals and our bodies are different compositions and at different stages of wellness. What suits one person perfectly, may not be the best diet and lifestyle change for you. This is why we all know someone who lost an enormous amount of weight or increased their energy levels on a specific diet, but you had no success with the same diet. With mention of diet, I feel compelled to say that diets, in the sense of “going on a diet” and “coming off a diet”, is never going to be successful. Diet and lifestyle issues need to be addressed and altered in order to have success healing your issue. A diet for a month is only going to do you harm in the long run. Taking things slowly by setting achievable goals, working with someone who can navigate and motivate you and tweak what needs to be tweaked will provide the best results long term.
TAKES TIME TO LISTEN AND ADDRESS YOUR CONCERNS – treating an illness or long term lifestyle issue successfully, takes more time than a 10-15 minute consultation. An initial consultation takes 1.5 hours and includes your main health concern/s, your health goals, detailed health history, what you have tried with limited or no success and what you are currently doing to address the issue. Depending on the complexity of the situation, you may have a treatment plan when you leave the consultation, or you may receive and treatment plan within 24 hours. Dietary and lifestyle changes are priority, with supplementation provided when necessary (I feel in our ever changing, stressful, processed world, targeted supplementation is often warranted). After you try the recommendations given for two weeks you come back to see the practitioner and we discuss how the recommendations are going, do you notice any changes/improvements, what was too hard to achieve at the moment and how can we better reach the health goals. That consultation generally goes for 40 minutes. Further consultations (eg monthly) may be required, depending on the issue, to navigate you to “your” optimal health until you are confident that you are successfully heading in the right direction. Please note that some chronic diseases have occurred over many years and will not necessarily be “turned around” in a few short weeks., additionally, some issues may only be able to be maintained (slowing progression).
BALANCES YOUR BODY SYSTEMS – homeostasis is when the body is in balance. A nutritional medicine practitioner aims to bring the body into homeostasis. That could be an “out of balance” microbiome in the gut, where inflammation producing bacteria flourish and anti-inflammatory bacteria struggle. The microbiome is an important organ in the body and is responsible for many tasks including extracting nutrients from ingested food. Another example of being out of balance is that your immune system can get out of balance with a more dominant T-Helper Cell 1 (Th1) dominating over T-Helper Cell 2 (Th2) or vice versa. There are times when we come into contact with certain bacteria or viruses which requires Th1 or Th2 to be more dominant. However after the threat has been dealt with, your immune system should come back into balance. With a dysfunctional immune system one side remains dominant (common Th1 dominant conditions include Type 1 diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Crohn’s disease, Psoriasis. Common Th2 dominant conditions include asthma, allergies, ulcerative colitis, atopic eczema). Diet, lifestyle changes and supplementation can be used to modulate the immune system.
TREATING THE CAUSE AND BEING A NUTRITION DETECTIVE– a Panadol takes away the pain of the headache, but in the case of a chronic headache disorder, it will come back. The question to ask is why do you have the headache. Unless you address the cause you are just applying a band-aid, not fixing the problem. In the case of a headache, there are many reasons. An example could be down regulated liver detoxification (this allows toxic metabolites to remain in your bloodstream for longer causing damage) – in this instance – support the liver and you remove the headache. Stress (excess cortisol being released into your bloodstream by the adrenal gland) is another common cause of a headache, in today’s world this is a much harder one of fix – relaxing cup of tea, meditation, deep breathing, remove the stressor (easier said than done), supplement or make dietary changes to support your adrenal gland. Pre-menstrual headaches, hypertension headaches, allergy headaches and sinus headaches, the list goes on. The important note is, find the cause and then you can address the issue.
INTERPRETING FUNCTIONAL DIAGNOSTICS AND DNA WELLNESS TESTS – Natural Medicine Practitioners take a different view on testing and have different ideal ranges. Reference ranges are determined by taking a group of the population and averaging out the result. If you take iron levels for example, when the reference range was created, some of the sample of people from the population group may have had hemochromatosis, or severe anaemia or some other chronic disease, which would have given a greatly altered “healthy” average. Another example of interpreting tests differently is diagnosis of hypothyroidism under the standard of care. This system uses only the TSH. TSH is a dynamic reading which can change constantly. One day normal, next day hypothyroid, next day normal. A more comprehensive way of looking at the thyroid is by completing a full thyroid panel, including thyroid antibodies, which gives you an overall picture of what is going on within the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal and thyroid glands – they are all connected and all work together. DNA wellness testing can be undertaken to determine which Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) you have in your genetic makeup. By knowing where there is a weakness, actions can be taken to provide support where required.
PROVIDE NUTRITIONAL AND SUPPLEMENTAL GUIDANCE FOR ALL LIFE STAGES – Nutritional Medicine Practitioners treat everyone as individual by taking a comprehensive history and treating individually. You may be a mother wanting advice on your child’s eczema, a teenager with hormonal issues, preparing to have a baby or needing post natal advice, menopausal, elderly wanting more energy, the list goes on. Everyone is looked at individually for their life stage and health concern. Just a note on recommended daily allowance (RDI). These amounts are not conducive the optimal health, for example the RDI of Vitamin C of around 80mg is the amount to ensure you do not get scurvy, whilst that is good, if we are looking for “our” optimal health, Vitamin C is needed for much more than preventing scurvy, so we need to look much higher than that. Same for Vitamin B1 with an RDI of approximately 1.1mg, ensures you do not get beriberi. Determining what supplements you do or do not need is determined with a full consultation which includes your history, symptoms and lifestyle choices.
LIFESTYLE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ADVICE – recommendations relating to but not limited to – what water you drink, how you use your mobile phone and technology, cleaning products, clothing, personal care products, bedding, how you spend you free time (watching TV or getting out in the garden etc), sleep hygiene, stress levels, toxic exposures.
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