There is a symbiotic relationship between food and overall health that is very real, and nutritional medicine plays a definitive role in promoting wellness objectives of healing mind, body, and spirit.

Of course, everyone has heard over and over again how important it is to eat a healthy and balanced diet, but sometimes life gets in the way and keeps us from making good food choices for our daily diets. Perhaps it would be easier to comply with if we started thinking of food as our daily medicine, and nutrition as our guide to eating a more balanced diet. With that prescription, we’d easily achieve optimal health and wellness and avoid the conditions associated with poor nutrition and ill-health, such as:

• Digestive Complaints (Bloating, Indigestion, Reflux, Nausea, Flatulence, IBS, Colitis, Crohn’s disease, Candidiasis)
• Chronic Fatigue, Insomnia
• Blood Sugar Imbalance (Diabetes, Insulin Resistance, Hypoglycemia)
• Cardiovascular Disease (High Cholesterol, High Blood Pressure)
• Infertility, Pre-Conceptual Care, Pregnancy, Post-Pregnancy
• Poor Immune Function (Frequent Colds and Infections)
• Weight Management (Under or Overweight, Eating Disorders)
• Allergies or Food Sensitivities

WIth nutritional medicine, practitioners can create a diet and lifestyle plan for clients that can restore health to the body and thereby alleviate symptoms associated with the disease.  It is the lack of health that causes disease, and not disease and symptoms that cause health problems. For some clients, nutritional supplements may be prescribed to assist in the treatment of specific health conditions.

Nutritional Medicine Defined

Nutritional Medicine can be simply defined as the relationship of food to the well-being of the human body. It also encompasses the study of environmental effects on the quality of foods and the impact of nutritional factors on health and disease. Nutritional medicine uses food, and individual nutrients in doses only achievable in supplement form, for medicinal and therapeutic effects.

Efficacy of Nutritional Medicine

Nutrients are involved in the creation of every molecule and the maintenance of every system in the body. The body requires more than 45 nutrients to maintain health. Many vitamins and minerals act as coenzymes in promoting essential chemical reactions. They help regulate metabolism, assist in the formation and maintenance of bones and tissues, hormones, nervous system chemicals, and genetic material. Subtle nutrient deficiencies can occur before the onset of frank, classical deficiency. Such marginal deficiencies may ultimately contribute to the development of degenerative diseases. Nutritional medicine aims to optimize nutrition according to individual biochemical, environmental and health states.

Nutritional Medicine Evaluation

A typical nutritional medicine evaluation includes the following clinical assessments to determine nutritional status. Many of the standard evaluation methods include:

• History and Physical
  • Including Family History of Disease
• Dietary Analysis
  • Including Eating Habits and Food Intake
• Lifestyle Analysis
  • Including Exercise, Stress, Sleeping Patterns
• Diagnostic Tests
  • Bio-Impedance Analyzer
  • Blood Pressure
  • Blood Sugar
  • Kidney, Liver, and Digestive Function
• Nutrient Deficiency Analysis
  • Zinc Test 
  • Hair Mineral Analysis
• Heavy Metal Toxicity
• Fat and Protein Imbalances
• Immune Status