The bad news about chronic disease is that there isn’t a cure. The good news about chronic disease is, there are thousands of ways we can impact our health, with the choices we make.
How do we do this? We use the tools of our creative power to write different stories. The more we learn to master and use these tools, the more capable we are of generating better stories.
These tools include not only the food we eat, but also, the words we speak, the thoughts we meditate on, our interpersonal connections, the movement and rest we engage in, and even the grace and forgiveness we cultivate.
As a nutritionist, my primary focus starts with food. However, food is not the entire story. People can eat perfect diets (if there even is such a thing) and still find themselves unwell. While food may be the cornerstone, it’s not 100% of the fix, and any approach to wellness that is going to succeed has to recognize the entirety of our humanity.
A wellness story that only talks about food, is like a movie with only a script. You may have a great set-up, but you’re lacking a cohesive film.
As a Nutritionist, I chose to focus my studies in Functional Medicine. Functional Medicine is an approach to healthcare that was created to help addresses the modern crisis of chronic disease. The advantage of Functional Medicine is that it addresses root or causative factors in the development of dysfunction, rather than only looking at and treating disease retroactively.
Functional Medicine is a science based, proactive approach, to altering health, by realizing that every patient has a unique story past, and that the best approach to bringing vitality will differ between individuals. There is no formula for health because health is not an arrival point.
Health is a story.
I believe in the power of food to help create wellness.
My food philosophy is based on using real food in its most natural form. Food is, simply put, biochemical information. Most frequently we think of food as providing energy (or calories) which it does. But food is more than calories. Food is the raw material we use to repair our bodies with, and it’s what we use when we build tissue (organs, cells, muscles, etc.) But food is, yet still, even more than that. When we break food down in digestion, food is also full of biochemical information. The vitamins, minerals, and various nutrients in food actually interact with our own genetics, causing certain genes to be turned on, up-regulated, down-regulated, or turned off.
To put it another way, food interacts with the blueprint, provides construction material, and gives fuel for your body.
I help people become clear on how to use food to help them create the most wellness.
My wellness philosophy is about being empowered; it’s about understanding your power, and understanding how you can continually use that power to create the most vibrant wellness story possible.