Friday, April 1, 2016

Food Fight!

As I reflect on opinions about the perfect or right  diet, often strongly held as fact or the only way, I am brought to recognizing that there is really no one true diet that works for all.  While we may all be human, genetic diversity as well as environmental influences, both helpful and harmful, affect how the body processes and utilizes food.

There are a few common aspects of nutrition, known to be facts that affect everyone adversely – refined carbohydrates in excess and trans fats.  Processing of any food will deteriorate the beneficial qualities of the food in its original nature.

Often when people learn that I am a nutritionist, there is an immediate assumption that I must be vegetarian.  In a laugh, I comment that I am not and that I enjoy my grass-fed red meat.  In fact, given my own personal medical journey with anemia, leukemia and lyme, my blood and bone marrow need good quality flesh protein.  In fact, during my years of experimentation with vegetarian diets, I loved the taste of the food, but my body did not feel well with it.  Later, as I learned to do food sensitivity testing, most of the legumes and soy foods were not my best friends.  Nor is fish!  One asks “What” – fish is the best food.  Not for me.  I am sensitive to many fish and in fact become doubled over with stomach pain and sweats with scallops.

On the other hand, I met with a client not long ago with a history of breast cancer, colon polyps, osteopenia and hyperparathyroidism.  Immediately I felt that a mostly vegetarian diet would benefit her various conditions.  I find it important to listen intently to the opinions that clients bring into the office, to evaluate the labs, to look at family history and of great excitement, is the advance in genetic testing.  I will be trained in greater detail in the upcoming weeks on this fascinating science of genomics. 

I truly believe that using information about our genes and how they express in illness will become the future of medicine.  No longer will “shot in the dark” medicines and treatments be how health is managed.  Targeted treatments utilizing special diets, supplements, stress management and other supportive modalities such as massage and acupuncture, will assist in modulating how genes are expressed – either being turned on or off.  What an exciting time in medicine.  Stay tuned for more!

In health,

Julie

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