What is Nutritional Therapy?
6th July 2021How the right nutrition can help you on your journey to the best health
Katie Shore
Nutritional Therapist
Nutritional Therapy is a recognised complementary medicine which involves the application of nutrition and lifestyle medicine sciences in the promotion of health, peak performance and individual care (BANT, 2021). At it’s heart, it’s personalised medicine which places you at the centre of your wellbeing.
What this means in practice is that you are provided with bespoke care and protocols tailored to your individual needs, not a blanket set of instructions that everyone receives. It takes into account your individual health journey, your health goals and dietary preferences. There may be some functional testing recommended to understand your specific biochemical circumstances which will ensure that your recommendations are as unique as you are.
Let’s take irregular periods as an example. If you’ve struggled with your cycle for a while (irregular flow, cramping, PMS etc.) and nothing you try is working to make you feel better, you’ll likely see your GP for advice. They may recommend you try a hormonal contraceptive such as the pill to ‘even out your cycle’. In reality all that does is mask the problem, it won’t solve what the underlying issue is that’s causing your irregular periods. When you come off that pill the issues will still be there.
When the body is out of balance we start to see symptoms manifesting; symptoms are information that something isn’t right. By piecing together your genetics, family history, environment, lifestyle and diet your practitioner will build up a picture of what might be at the root cause of those imbalances and help you to understand how to bring your body back into alignment. Working together we can help to ameliorate your symptoms and get your body functioning at it’s optimal as it should.
References:
BANT (2021) Why Personalised Nutrition. Available at: https://bant.org.uk/personalised-nutrition/
