What Is A Functional Nutritionist?

Welcome to the world of holistic medicine.  If you are new to the term, you might be wondering what it all means.  And that is exactly what this blog is about, to help you understand what taking a holistic approach to health means. To put it simply, it is finding the root causes of your health concerns, not only using foods but also in the form of powerful herbs, essential oils, connecting with mother nature, making better lifestyle choices and understanding the impacts of your environment on your body. It uses a preventative approach rather than a reactive approach, and teaches you to take your health back into your own hands.

Holistic medicine teaches you how to take better care of your body, and helps you to understand not only the what but why things are happening.

So, who practises holistic medicine?  There are quite a number of therapies that use this approach, such as Natropaths, Chinese Herbalists, Homeopaths, Functional Nutritionists, Acupuncturists, many Chiropractors, Massage Therapists, and even Biological Dentists, to name a few.  Each with their own specific field, but often all sharing the same concept.  Viewing the body as a whole and getting to root causes, rather than just looking at the body in a mechanistic view. That is to say, we don’t just look at one organ or one system, we look at the whole system.  A saying by one of my favourite mentors is that often we attempt to fix the messages with modern medicine, rather than fixing the messenger, the root cause.  We often try to externally replace what we are lacking, or remove what we have too much of, without addressing, the why behind it.  And that is how taking a holistic or functional approach to healing, can differ from western medicine.

As for a functional nutritionist specifically, we look at healing the body with food, and preventing illness in the first place.  Sadly, it is common for people to assume that if you do not hold a degree from a university then you mustn’t be as knowledgable, but this is quite untrue.  Functional Nutritionist are adequately trained to help individuals with their health, diet and lifestyle choices, through good nutrition.  Using food as medicine.

During my training with The Nutrition Academy, we were taught to approach the body as a whole, with the backbone of all our learning always coming back to vitalism and using a historical perspective when critically analysing not only our food choices, but lifestyle choices too.

What does that mean exactly?  Let me give you an example.  Let’s imagine we are holding a packet of chips in our hands, without having to think too much, what do we know about them?  They have often been sliced very finely, cooked in oils that are likely not great quality, at a high temperatures, sprinkled with seasonings that we label with numbers instead of names, and then eat them from a plastic or foil packet, which is stamped with quite a long shelf life and is often left sitting for quite a period of time, before reaching our mouths.  Now, if we think historically, to our thousands of years as a species, ask yourself, is this what we thrived on? Is this what got us to our point in evolution we find ourselves in today?  The answer is simple. The answer is no. And this is not the fuel our bodies crave to survive.

If you went through your grocery items, and did this with each item, and really analysed its contents, where it came from, how it was produced, and asked ourself that same question with each item, I think it would be safe to say that we would likely put back at least 80 percent of our trolley contents.  It is this kind of thinking that not only people with professional training, but the everyday person should be thinking.  Imagine how much different our stores would look if we all decided to buy real, whole organic foods, instead of items that really only mimic food with hardly any nutritional value left in them.  If the demand for better food became greater and greater, that could surely mean a healthier society. 

Functional Nutritionist also understand that there is no “one size fits all diet”.  We don’t go by what the standard guidelines say, but rather encourage you to eat foods that we know are good for us, real foods.  And if you have food intolerances or allergies, we can help you to find out why or at the very least help you to identify the culprits.  Issues with our food is quite a new phenomenon.  I only have to think back to my own childhood to recall the very rare occurrence of food intolerances, however today, it is so extremely common, and I do wonder why more of us are not asking, why?

As well your food choices, we also look at your overall gut health, as we believe this is where a vast majority of chronic illnesses are stemming from, with studies on the topic being explored everyday. The studies on our gut health is fairly recent, and we are only going to learn more about it as we head into the future. We must remember that we are loading our bodies with toxins and chemicals that were never before present, not in the rates they are today, and while our bodies can cope with some toxins, via our detox pathways, we are overloading ourselves in todays modern society, and we must consider that our gut health is likely taking the hit, which may then present in the many various chronic illnesses we are seeing today. 

If you are suffering from skin conditions, food allergies and intolerances, excess weight or underweight, if you just feel sluggish, if you are suffering with anxiety and depression, there are too many chronic illnesses to list, but starting with the food on your plate, really is the best place to begin improving your health.  WIth a functional nutritionist being a great source of information and support for you on that journey.

I am not going to say just by changing your diet that you will solve all your issues, as it often goes much deeper than just the food, we must also look at our environments, genetics, lifestyle choices, while also taking into consideration factors such as mould exposure, parasites and yeast infections. While there are illness out there that can greatly benefit from modern medicine, such as life saving insulin for diabetics, it is so important that we start asking, how and why did I develope this disease in the first place? The body was made to be healthy, it wants to thrive and survive, perhaps, many times, we are just not fueling it correctly and it is therefore sending us the message, through symptoms, that we are not headed in the right direction.

Holistic medicine teaches you to listen to that instinct, listen to the symptoms and find out the root cause as to why.

"It is more important to understand the imbalances in your bodies basic sysytems and restore balance, rather than name the disease and match the pill to the ill"

Unknown.

Emily