What is Nutritional Therapy?

Nutritional therapy uses a combination of diet, supplements and lifestyle changes to support you to achieve a specific health goal. That goal might be to address a health condition that you have been living with for a long time. Or it may be that you would like to adopt a healthier overall lifestyle.

What makes nutritional therapy unique and so effective is that it aims to uncover the root cause of your health issue, rather than just dealing with your symptoms.

Let’s use the analogy of you as a tree. Ideally, you want to be a strong healthy tree that thrives, blossoms and bears flowers and fruit. However, if the soil you are planted in does not contain all the nutrients you require to grow to fruition, you may fail to thrive. Your leaves may turn brown, flowers may not form and you may become weak. If you only address your brown leaves, you may not get to the bottom of what has caused them and are unlikely to resolve the issue long term. Symptoms in your human form are just like the damaged leaves on your tree. They alert you to an imbalance or health problem that needs to be addressed.

So you could say that nutritional therapy is the exploration of disease or imbalance which starts at the ‘root of the tree’. Each root could be considered as an aspect of your life style such as sleep, diet, exercise or stress levels. A nutritional therapist helps you to uncover the underlying imbalances in your body that are expressed as symptoms. Once the root cause is established, your nutritional therapist uses a science-based approach and adopts a range of nutrition and lifestyle recommendations. The aim is to restore your body back to a state of balance and health.

Why should you try nutritional therapy?

Here are some reasons why you might decide to seek the help of a nutritional therapist:

• You would like to make some positive changes to your diet and to adopt healthy eating habits.
• You are living with a chronic health condition such as IBS, diabetes type 2 or thyroid conditions.
• You would like to boost your immune function and natural defence to aid recovery and rehabilitation or reduce susceptibility to infection.
• You would like to know how to reduce the impact of stress on the body and improve your mental health.

What are the benefits of working with a nutritional therapist?

A nutritional therapist is there to guide you all the way through your health journey. It can be such a relief to really feel listened to. Your nutritional therapist will give you advice which is based on sound research, is personalised to your specific health issue, and is delivered in a non-judgemental and supportive environment.

Here are some of the many benefits of working with a nutritional therapist:

• Soothing, calming and resolving digestive issues such as acid reflux, bloating, constipation, diarrhoea and abdominal discomfort.
• Balancing your blood sugar to keep your energy steady and lower your risk of chronic illness.
• Boosting your immune system and resilience, so that you experience fewer colds, coughs and infections.
• Improving sleep quality, and increasing your energy level, so that you feel more productive and less tired.
• Helping you to manage and maintain a healthy weight.
• Reducing the impact that stress has on your overall health.
• Balancing your hormones to support physical and mental health.
• Addressing skin issues such as acne and psoriasis.
• Supporting a healthy heart to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease.

So you can see, there is not really an area of your health that would not benefit from working with a nutritional therapist!

What happens in a nutritional therapy consultation?

During the nutritional therapy process your practitioner really sees you as an individual, and acknowledges that factors that influence your health are complex and often interconnected. They include physiological, mental or emotional, environmental and societal factors.

So the first stage is to gather as much information about you and your health as possible. You will be asked to complete a detailed questionnaire and to fill in a diet diary before the consultation.

Depending on the complexity of your health issues and the type of package and duration you have chosen with your nutritional therapist, you are likely to have a series of consultations. After each one your nutritional therapist will give you a protocol which may include advice on diet, lifestyle and supplements. You will also be given recommendations for any medical tests that may be useful whether that be with your GP or private providers.

How long will it take for me to see results?

This will depend on a couple of factors.

The first is the complexity of your case. If you have come to see a nutritional therapist for a health MOT: an assessment of your current diet, lifestyle and supplements, and are seeking recommendations for changes you might make to improve your overall health, then this may be a matter of a few weeks or even less. If however, you have been living with a chronic condition for many years, it may take some time to unravel what is going on and to then to put in place a healing programme.

The second is your willingness to commit to the process. The therapeutic relationship between you and your nutritional therapist is a two way street. If you are fully prepared to take on board the changes that have been suggested for you, you are likely to see results faster than if you approach the process half-heartedly.

Here is the story of a client that came to see me for nutritional therapy:

Jonathan (name changed) came to see me after years of unpleasant digestive issues. They were so severe that he was becoming afraid to eat. He was experiencing abdominal pain, nausea, bloating and flatulence. He had tried to work out if was reacting to certain foods but found it difficult to pin point any specific culprit. It was really getting him down and he wanted to resolve the situation so that he could get on with his life without constantly worrying about food and his digestion.

What was the approach?

Initially I focussed on improving Jonathan’s diet, supporting his liver function and making sure that his digestion and bowels were working as well as they should be.

While he began to implement these initial changes, we ordered a comprehensive stool test. This looked at his digestive function, the balance of bacteria in the microbiome, whether there were any parasites, fungus or yeasts impacting on Jonathan’s health and if there was any inflammation present in the digestive tract.

The results came back with several things that we could work on. There was an excess of less desirable bacteria in the colon and not enough of others that have been shown to be beneficial. The test also revealed that Jonathan was having trouble breaking down protein in his food. With dietary changes and some supplemental support we addressed these issues.

Jonathan felt a lot better but there were still some issues remaining so we ran a food sensitivity test. This flagged up some foods that may have been contributing to Jonathan’s symptoms. We removed these foods from his diet for a period and then carefully reintroduced them one by one so that any reaction could be noted. No more guesswork!

While all this was going on, I was also giving Jonathan lots of advice on the relationship between his digestion and his mental health. The gut-brain axis has gained more and more interest as research shows that one impacts on the other and vice versa. Read more here. So we worked on ways of incorporating relaxation and breathing practices that lower stress levels and improve digestions.

How is Jonathan now?

We have been working together now for a year. Gradually bit by bit with Jonathan’s commitment to the process, he is almost symptom free. He is a completely different person to the one who came to me for help.

Not all cases take as long or are as complex as Jonathan’s and testing is not always required. But what this case shows is that by following all the clues, and really getting to the root cause of Jonathan’s digestive problems, we were able to gradually resolve them one by one.

Would YOU benefit from a nutritional therapy consultation?

If you are experiencing any health issues, please get in touch. I offer a free 20 minute chat for us to see if I may be able to help you. Book here.

Don’t settle for feeling less than your best, get in touch today. Set the wheels in motion for a healthier and happier you!