Balanced Nutrition
A Foundation For Good Health
Introduction
A Good diet has the power to strengthen your ability to handle stress and support the immune system. It has been evident that physically your diet was extremely important but, in even more powerful ways, your diet may affect your emotions as well as clarity and creativity. From the prospective of the ancient tradition the physical body is considered to be made of the food we eat. Our modern catch phase “you are what you eat,” really should be you are what you absorb!
Through the influence of the diet may be of a grosser and more superficial nature than that of the emotions with psychology and the manipulation of the subtle energy with acupuncture, it is still of fundamental importance. Unless nutrition is adequate, healing cannot occur and health will further deteriorate. In fact, a poor diet is often the overlooked limiting factor that prevents treatment from being successful and thwarts attempts at personal and spiritual progress.
Every health practitioner needs to be well grounded in the basic principles of nutrition; principles that he or she could apply in their own kitchen, as well as with their patients. But, this is not the case. Our modern doctors feel that this is below them, that they should not have to waste their valuable time with something so elementary.
Well, we do not feel this way. Our needs have gotten very complex and the correction can be so simple that it escapes even the brightest minds. We have designed a program to provide a simple coherent knowledge of how to work with your diet.
Today, the diet is not the same diet that your grandmother and grandfather enjoyed. They did not have fast foods, take out, and quick weight loss plans. Preservatives, additives, colorings and flavorings are a thing of the last thirty to forty years. But, the things that are making foods convenient are the things that are making them poison to most of the people that live in this fast paced society.
Change
The slow and gradual change of diet is what produces lasting results and it is what most people want unless there is some illness or injury to speed the process along. How to motivate one’s self to undertake this change, how to understand the relationship between dietary change and how to help pace yourself toward these goals of better health will be discussed with the doctor and staff.
Nutritional Assessment
There are various ways of assessing and monitoring dietary habits. Chief among these is the daily diet sheet and symptom survey questionnaire. Blood samples, urine samples and saliva samples are often used. But, one of the most comprehensive assessments that have really made great advances since the computer analysis is the Trace Mineral Analysis (TMA). Applied Kinesiological Testing will also be discussed and used as another primary assessment method.
The advantages and disadvantages of the different testing methods will be discussed with the doctor. One or all of these ways of getting to the root cause of your problem will be used. If there is no problem and you just want a routine assessment of your nutrition usually all that is required is a questionnaire and the TMA.
Supplements
There is a huge and growing volume of literature on the therapeutic value and use of nutritional supplements. This body of work will be introduced and discussed, with key indications for the use of specific nutrients such as calcium, enzymes, amino acids, and pH. We use all organic whole food supplements from a company (Standard Process) that has been in business here in the United States for the past 100 years. We have utilized their products services for the past 30 years and couldn’t be happier.
Therapeutic Versus Maintenance Diets
No sound work can be done in the field of clinical nutrition unless one bears clearly in mind the difference between a diet that is designed to treat an illness or injury and a diet that is designed to maintain good health once it is restored.
The principle differences between these two approaches and when and how to change from one track to the other will be discussed with the doctor at the time of consultation.
Specific Therapeutic Diets
It is said that one man’s food is another man’s poison, and the sicker one gets the truer this becomes. Details on dietary regimes such as: arthritic, diabetic, heart, cancer, stroke and weight control diets will be discussed on an individual basis. Food sensitive patients will find the Integrative Medicine Centre Nutrition program one of the best.
Constipation
Constipation is one of the most common afflictions of the human race and diseases of the digestive organs are the most common reason for an individual to seek the advice of a physician. Constipation is defined as the difficult or infrequent passage of feces and is associated with the presence of dry, hardened stools. The constipated condition may lead to intestinal toxemia that is a form of blood poisoning. This is caused by the absorption of bacteria and their toxins through the intestinal wall.
The colon or the large intestine is the most prolific source of bacterial contamination in the entire body. Thirty-six toxic substances have been isolated from the human colon, mainly derived from the bacterial decomposition of proteins. Temporary increases in the toxic load of the liver occur during periods of stagnation in the colon. Any prolongation of this state will impede the detoxifying and bacterial killing function of the liver. The importance of this function cannot be overlooked when one realizes that blood from the intestinal tract enters the liver before it is delivered to the tissues of the body.
An over burdened liver, which cannot handle the toxic load from the intestine, transfers the task of detoxification onto another organ, the kidney. Unfortunately, the kidney cannot reduce the amount and kinds of toxins that enter the liver, or to detoxify them as efficiency as the liver. The toxins, which the kidneys do not remove from the blood adversely, affect the kidney tubules and increases circulating body-toxin levels.
Laxatives aggravate the problem of constipation by interfering with the colon’s ability to eliminate normally on it’s own. Most laxatives and purgatives precipitate dehydration in the individual. Standard enemas only cleanse the rectum and the last portion of the colon missing most of the intestine.
You know your colon is not functioning correctly when you begin to have constipation, irritability, bad breath, fatigue, dull eyes, colitis, poor complexion, abdominal pain, gas, jaundice, vomiting, excessive hunger, diarrhea, intestinal parasites, liver trouble, difficult digestion, bloating, gall bladder trouble, just to name a few.
Your colon is the center of health of the human body. Be sure you take care of it. If there is any problems like those mentioned above let the doctors at the Integrative Medicine Centre know so the cause can be corrected.
