Nutrition and Nutritional Consults
Nutritional Overview
Nutrition for Life
Food is fundamental
Nutrition and diet are life foundations.
Every culture gathers together around food from growing it to eating it. It connects us to nature and to one another.
Every medical system, throughout the ages, has stressed the importance of diet to overall health and vitality. This is in addition to how nutrition addresses specific conditions and aids in recovery of any illness or imbalance. A diet that is unbalanced either in quality or quantity can create imbalance within the body, the mind and even our spirits.
TPC offers a range of nutritional services to help you discover and reach your nutritional and dietary needs and goals. I combine Chinese functional medicine & dietary and nutritional counseling with the current best scientific nutritional advice in the context of your diagnosis, constitutional type, treatment plan, and lifestyle.
In Chinese medicine food is considered to be part of medicine. I may suggest that you add specific foods or food types to your diet. I’ll always recommend a diet of whole nutrient rich foods that are available in your area.
In addition to advice about which foods will benefit you and which foods to avoid to address your conditions. I’ll work with you to help you make the changes you need to introduce healing and healthy foods into your diet simply; through delicious recipes and flavors.
You’ll be able to choose the dietary changes and eat in a balanced way that makes sense for you and your family.
Resources of cooking classes, groups, and gardening opportunities will offer you support and understanding in making healthy eating a habit.
Go to network references or classes and events.
Why Nutritious Diets Are Necessary and Powerful
Why focus on nutrition? Because we have choices; we’re in the driver’s seat in terms of what we eat. Healthy balanced diets are shown to result in improved functioning and health through all systems, increased immune response and fewer illnesses. This is true for any age and any stage of life.
Here are more benefits reported by clients and researchers.
- Increased amount and quality of energy
- Improved moods and emotional balance
- A greater ability to respond to life’s stresses with greater calm and balance
- Improved sleep/lack of insomnia
- Better hormonal balance and lack / reduction of hormonal disruption
- More stability and fewer weight fluctuations
- Reduced digestive problems
- Regulation and stability of blood sugar levels
We live in a time of extremes in farming and food.
Agribusiness and fast food on one hand and whole, nutrient rich foods sustainably raised on the other. Fats, sugars, and salt in additive filled, processed foods has helped to produce epidemics of preventable and reversible conditions (think childhood & adult obesity, type 2 diabetes, digestive and cardiovascular disorders) arising from diet, stress, and environmental factors. Many products have a full range of ingredients (hormones, antibiotics, chemicals) which have nothing to do with food. Even “natural “ foods contain junk. Doesn’t it make sense to eat as many unprocessed, whole foods as possible that nourish us and are able to reverse many conditions? We have the ability to choose whole, unprocessed foods and need to do so.
Conditions
Optimal Health and Wellbeing
It’s important to take some time to think about what you will eat each day. Preparing and eating food can be delicious and fun. Something to savor.
When considering optimal health and wellbeing we consider eating for life stage, eating for our unique constitutions, our activity levels, and lifestyles. Let’s also consider the Ways we eat.
“Cooking might be the most important factor in fixing our public health crisis. It’s the single most important thing you can do for your health. Reclaiming cooking as an act of enjoyment and self reliance, learning to perform the magic of these everyday transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life.”
— MP
As many know eating together promotes a sense of community, connection, and relationship. These too, are health benefits important to our wellbeing and quality of life.
Mindful Eating
“Mindfulness is rooted in the realization that when we ignore what we are seeing, touching, or eating, it is as if it does not exist. If we eat while watching television, distracted and not really tasting, the food goes down without our noticing it. We remain somehow hungry and unsatisfied. We go away from the table searching for something more to nourish us.”
“Through mindful eating we can learn to be present when we eat. It seems so simple, to be aware of what we are eating, but somehow we have lost track of how to do it. Mindful eating is a way to reawaken our pleasure in simply eating, simply drinking.”
— Dr Jan Bays
Let us savor and be satisfied.
Nutrition for Fertility and Pregnancy
Many of my patients who come for help when trying to conceive want to learn eat in a healthy manner. They are looking for the best foods and diets to eat to get pregnant, stay healthy in pregnancy and raise healthy children. I share in these goals and am committed to provide support through treatment and advice including nutritional guidelines.
Whether you feel you already are a healthy eater, or know you need help with dietary changes we begin by looking at the ways we can bring your body and mind into balance in preparing for conception and pregnancy. Research shows that nutrition is one of the easiest ways to enhance fertility.
For women and couples trying to conceive my dietary advice will be tailored to your unique thorough diagnosis focused on your age, your particular constitution, your lifestyle and the state of your “garden” (how healthy you are right now).
Below are some guiding principles of nutrition and examples of nutrient to help you get started which are necessary for conception and pregnancy, as well as overall health and well being throughout our lives.
There are three elements that affect fertility the most: diet and nutrition, hormonal levels and balance, and stress levels.
Numerous scientific studies give evidence of the ways that nutrition is an essential foundation for fertility, conception, and pregnancy.
(You can read it here or download a PDF)
Overall nutritional principles for conception and pregnancy
- Nourish yourself
- Eat a balanced ratios of carbs, fats, and protein determined by your needs is necessary. All are the three essential building blocks of life.
- Enjoy a wide range of seasonal, fresh foods; organic if possible.
- Know right kind of protein, carbs and fats (unsaturated the best)
- Protein, wild or hormone free
- Carbohydrates, the complex, longer digesting kind.
- Learn why fats are necessary for hormone production.
- Fats are necessary for helping ovulation.
- Eat fiber; a variety of fruits, vegetables (especially green leafy, yellow and red) providing vital nutrients.
- Add supplements which our bodies need but can’t make. Example: Essential fatty acid (EFA), Vitamin C
- Add supplement: Vitamins and minerals our foods aren’t supplying or our constitutions need more of.
- Herbal medicine can serve as a foundation and as food.
- Moderate stimulants
Avoid Nutritional Obstacles
- Avoid trans fat, low fat, or too many saturated fats.
- Animal protein needs to be organic as much as possible to assure lack of added hormones and antibiotics which disrupt hormonal functioning and balance.
- Avoid high sugar fruits, veggies, or carbohydrates.
- Avoid high sugar substitutes, (high fructose corn syrup) and all additives.
- Know your allergies, (nuts, shellfish)
Nutrition for Pediatrics
In Chinese medicine children are considered ” tender shoots” whose physiology and constitution needs to be nourished and protected. As parents know, they are growing and developing.
Their digestive tract and physiology is still developing and very different from their parents. This will stabilize by age seven. Until then, food choices need to support the sensitivities of a child’s digestive system, encouraging many cooked foods.
- Treating digestive difficulties in children for centuries, Chinese Medical Pediatrics is truly preventative medicine in terms of nutrition. Modification of diets can re-establish and maintain health in children such as the following:
- Many of the symptoms of asthma, constipation, skin issues, and allergies can be linked to a child’s diet sensitivities.
- A diet rich in cooked veggies, whole grains, whole fruits, not juices.
- Care taken, not too much nor too little food.
- 20% raw or cold ( uncooked) foods , no formulas
- Breast milk best, builds immune system, natural antibodies
- not too yin and not to yang
- Emotional settling
- LIMIT ANTIBIOTIC USES.
