Nutrition

Balanced nutrition is one of the most important aspects of having a healthy life. From the point of view of which aspects of your health you can have some control over, it is the most important. You are what you eat.

Please note that we are talking about nutrition here, and not diets. Fad diets come and go, but the nutrition that your body needs, and everybody else’s, has been the same for thousands of years. Fad diets often place all the emphasis on one aspect of nutrition (lack of carbohydrates, lack of refined foods, lack of mixing various types of foods) but what your body needs is balanced nutrition for balanced health.

Just by following general guidelines on nutrition, many of our clients find that they feel healthier and happier. They also usually find that they lose weight.

There are 3 things we eat –

• Carbohydrates
• Fat
• Protein

The body can make energy from all three, but it is more difficult to make energy from protein than from carbohydrates. This means that the process of converting protein into energy takes longer (so no fluctuating blood sugar levels), and the body uses up more energy in converting the protein, so it helps to lose weight! So some protein is necessary for full health, as well as some carbohydrates and some fat.

As a general comment about food, studies show that the nutritional content of the foods we eat today is generally lower than at any time in the past. This is primarily caused by intensive farming, so even if you eat organic try and check that they use a good policy of crop rotation if you want to eat nutritious fruit and vegetables. It is for this reason that we recommend Juice Plus which is an organic supplement that gives you all the nutrition equivalent to 4 servings of organic fruit and vegetables per day.

And there are many things we drink –

But the only natural substance is water.

The human body is 70% water. Even our bones are 20% water. We need water, constantly throughout the day.

When severely dehydrated, the body’s thirst mechanism switches off. So people who don’t drink at all may say that they do not feel thirsty, but the chances are their body is already trying to tell them in other ways (back problems, digestive issues, headaches etc) that it needs more water.

Caffeine (teas, coffees etc) and fizzy drinks are diuretics, meaning that your body will quickly pass out more water than consumed, which makes you dehydrated.

We also recommend the Blood Group Diet, for people who know their blood group. The book Eat Right 4 Your Type by Dr Peter D’Adamo is available from Amazon.

In a treatment we will ask questions about your diet, and where appropriate make suggestions. And we will not be recommending stewed frogs legs or a full English breakfast. We are busy people too, so our advice will be practical and not expensive.

The one supplement that we do recommend is Juice Plus, a blend of 17 organic fruit and vegetables, and not much else! It contains all the main anti-oxidants (Lutein and Zeaxanthin, Vitamin E, Alpha carotene, beta carotene and lycopene) that we need from our fruit and veg.

It is very easily absorbed, and independent studies at universities around the world show how effective they are in raising our levels of anti-oxidants.