NUTRITIONAL MEDICINE
Based on Hippocrates’ philosophy “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”, nutritional medicine is all about healthy dietary choices to create the foundation for optimal health. By addressing nutritional deficiencies with dietary strategies and supplements if required, nutritional medicine ensures our body gets all the nutrients it needs to maintain a healthy nutrient status and, above all, optimal wellbeing.
An essential part of staying healthy is to ensure you’re eating all of the nutrients and prebiotic fibre required to support a healthy gut microbiome, immune system and energy production. For example, magnesium, the most common nutrient deficiency by far, is fundamental to mitochondria function, our little “energy factories” contained in every cell of our body. So if you’re a stressed gym junkie not eating your leafy greens you’ll be feeling quite fatigued.
These days, with internet searches and their rabbit holes, it can be confusing to navigate your way through the sheer volume of everyone’s opinion of what constitutes a healthy diet. It seems like everyone’s an expert (even without the necessary training), Katie can help clarify what is best for you based on years of study, continual professional education to keep abreast with the latest research, and over 20 years of clinical experience.
At the end of the day, we want to enjoy food. Katie’s “big picture” approach is aim for diets that are expansive including a wide variety of wholefoods – vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts & seeds, fruits and some light proteins. When it comes to conditions such as food intolerances, where a restrictive diet is a short-term necessity as part of getting better, long term restrictive diets run the danger of depriving the gut microbiome of the variety of prebiotic fibres it requires to feed a variety of healthy gut bacteria. The result will be a compromised gut microbiome with limited healthy gut bacteria. By shifting the focus to how can we improve the body’s response to these foods rather than living a life without them is a much more positive and exciting approach to diet therapy. By correcting dysfunctional digestion and consuming a diverse diet that is rich in prebiotic fibre foods, a healthy and diverse gut microbiome will be created.
Good nutrition doesn’t have to be hard work, boring and flavourless! Katie works with you to create a diet plan that’s manageable, easy to maintain, and aligns with your lifestyle. This is the beauty of working with someone who has a detailed understanding of nutritional medicine, dietary requirements while acknowledging and incorporating what works for you.