Nutritional Medicine

Nutritional medicine is an important aspect of Naturopathic wisdom that focuses on the role of food and nutrition in maintaining health and preventing and treating disease. It recognises that the foods we eat provide the building blocks for our bodies, and that deficiencies or imbalances in our diet can contribute to a wide range of health problems.

Nutritional medicine is so essential to address that it will almost always be an important aspect of your treatment plan, or your constitutional or preventative medicine recommendations. However, it will always be an individualised approach, as there is no one size fits all approach. However, a “real” and unprocessed foods approach will be encouraged.

Sometimes diet or lifestyle is insufficient to overcome nutritional deficiencies or physiological imbalances caused by modern foods, inadequate diet, or lifestyle issues. There are many factors that can create a higher demand for nutrients, such as stress, allergies, teenage growth spurts, oral contraceptives, fad diets, lack of sunlight, being elderly (poor absorption), poor digestion, alcohol, too much cooked food versus raw, too much convenience food/takeaways/eating out/ processed foods. Therefore nutritional supplements are often recommended, which can help address the underlying imbalances.

Many people have strong nutritional and dietary preferences, including ethical or long-term issues such as being vegetarian or gluten intolerant. Susan will work with you where you are at, and make appropriate recommendations for you. She is a proponent of a whole food plant-based approach for long-term health and wellbeing, so is comfortable working with a wide range of clients, including vegans and omnivores. She is also very familiar with the Medical Medium approach and can coach in this area if desired.