Good nutrition is essential for good health. This means getting access to quality nutrients, such as proteins, vitamins and minerals.
The modern, Western diet has evolved to suit the more stressful way of life many of us have adopted over the years – rushed meals, convenient, heavily processed foods and snacks, as well as over-sized portions. This, combined with lack of exercise and excess intake of toxins, such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, means that, in many cases, the body does not have receive the quality nutrients it relies on for optimal health. Often this manifests as fatigue, general malaise, poor resistance to viruses (e.g. cold virus), weight gain, poor skin and hair to name but a few. In more serious cases, clinical disease can occur.
Nutritional therapy can be thought of as a powerful, complementary tool for the treatment of many diseases and syndromes - it works well alone or alongside conventional medicine. As well as looking at optimal nutrition, a therapist will look at your lifestyle as a whole and tailor nutritional and lifestyle advice to your individual situation.
Individuality is an important factor in nutrition and is taken into account by a nutritional therapist.
However, good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle are obviously desirable and you do not have to be ‘suffering from something’ to benefit from a nutritional therapist. It isn’t all carrots and spinach though, if you eat and live right 80% of the time, you can relax a little more with the other 20% without too much cause for concern.
