Nutritional Medicine

Nutritional Medicine is based on the principle that nutrients, including essential micronutrients, are required for the proper functioning of all the biochemical processes on which our bodies depend. Therefore, when treating symptoms or diseases, we look for the underlying causes which, although often partly genetic, are usually very much tied up with nutritional and environmental factors. This is in contrast to the tendency in the conventional medical approach to treat symptoms by means of drugs or surgery. Think of nutritional medicine as a holistic approach to the interactions of both nutrition and environment on human health.

 

What are Nutrients?

Nutrients are the building blocks of our physical body. When the body is supplied with the correct balance of foods, vitamins and minerals we remain healthy. The process at 360 Wellness Hub starts with a bioresonance assessment of the human body and based on the scan results, personalized supplements are compounded in the lab to address the deficiencies of the individual.

 

What Does a Nutrition Medicine Practitioner do?

The nutritional medicine practitioner provides you with dietary advice and may prescribe practitioner-only nutritional supplements to help in a broad range of health conditions. Much research in this field has been carried out in recent years so in many instances, prescriptions are evidence-based.

Nutritional medicine has evidence for reducing inflammation, toxicity, managing oxidative stress, correcting hormonal imbalances, improving immune function, altering genetic expression and reducing coagulation of blood. A nutritionist is not a doctor, but a doctor may be a nutritionist.

Doctors who choose to become certified in nutrition can greatly expand their knowledge and abilities in dealing with clients' food and nutrition needs, especially as they relate to overall wellness. While food is not technically considered a medicine in the medical field, some people use the term nutritional medicine because the nutrients in certain foods can be used to treat specific medical problems.

 

Nutritional Medicine and Mental Health

Psychiatry is at an important juncture, with the current pharmacologically focused model having achieved modest benefits in addressing the burden of poor mental health worldwide. Although the determinants of mental health are complex, the emerging and compelling evidence for nutrition as a crucial factor in the high prevalence and incidence of mental disorders suggests that diet is as important to psychiatry as it is to cardiology, endocrinology, and gastroenterology. Evidence is steadily growing for the relation between dietary quality (and potential nutritional deficiencies) and mental health, and for the select use of nutrient-based supplements to address deficiencies, or as monotherapies or augmentation therapies (Nutritional Medicine as mainstream in psychiatry, The Lancet, 1 March, 2015).

 

Nutritional Medicine Approach

Nutritional Medicine identifies nutritional and metabolic imbalances and determines how these contribute to your health concerns. By targeting these imbalances through dietary and lifestyle measures, nutritional medicine addresses the root cause of your health problems and supports the body back to optimum health and wellness.

 

Nutritional medicine/therapy uses a multi-step approach involving:

• Optimising the diet to avoid detrimental foods and provide abundance of nutrients to correct any deficiencies

• Boosting the immune system

• Healing the gut

• Enhancing detoxification and reducing toxin exposure

• Balancing hormones

• Treating infections such as Lyme disease, EBV and co-infections

• Stress management

• Improving sleep

• Lifestyle advice including exercise

 

Nutritional Medicine Process

Every individual is unique and therefore the nutrition programme is unique. In Nutritional Medicine, there is no “one size fits all” approach, but an individualised programme tailored to client’s exact health requirements will be created after understanding their needs. To understand the specific problem of the client is often like detective work using clues to find the cause of the issue. To accomplish this requires:

• Thorough questioning in the consultation

• Understanding each sign and symptom

• Learning about family and personal medical history

• Discovering use of medication

• Functional testing using blood, stool, urine and/or saliva

• Bioresonance scan

 

Does Nutritional Medicine Work?

Most people know good nutrition and physical activity can help maintain a healthy weight. But the benefits of good nutrition go beyond weight. Good nutrition can help: Reduce the risk of some diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, some cancers, and osteoporosis.