Nutritional Therapy is recognised as a complementary medicine, based on up front Nutrition science and regulated by governing bodies. It is most relevant for individuals with chronic conditions, as well as those wanting to maintain or enhance their health, wellbeing and sport performance.

Nutritional Therapy is not a quick fix, but a journey of self discovery and it may take some time to regain optimum health. I appreciate that change isn’t easy, but I believe that with the right tools, mind set and attitude, impossible things may become possible. So, please bare this thought in mind though: “what brought you here, won’t take you there”. You have to take action and make changes if you want different results.

Micro and macronutrients influence the functions of your body, protect against disease, restore health, and determine people’s response to changes in the environment. Under certain circumstances and in more susceptible individuals, diet can be a serious risk factor for a number of diseases. Common dietary chemicals, for instance, can act on the human genome, either directly or indirectly, to alter genes structure and expression. These changes may play a major role in the onset, progression and severity of chronic diseases.

Nutritional therapists

Registered Nutritional Therapists (NTs) are uniquely trained to use a wide range of assessment tools to identify how potential nutritional imbalances and life style factors may contribute to the individual’s symptoms and illness. Based on this knowledge, NTs will create personalised nutrition and lifestyle programmes, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, in order to mitigate and hopefully reverse disease. Success of the intervention is not a promise, as a positive outcome may have many variables, like: genetic predisposition, severity of symptoms and their duration, uncontrollable environmental factors, socio-economic, personal determination, compliance to the programme etc.

Preliminary assessment tools consist of a questionnaire, to highlight the client’s health goals, a comprehensive health and medical screening and a three days food and symptom diary. These may be sufficient, in most cases, to determine the right nutritional protocol for the client to follow. In more complex clinical scenarios, conventional and functional tests may be used to individualize more obscure causes of symptoms and disease. The most common are urinalysis and blood tests, but also allergy, hair mineral analysis, stool, organic acids, DNA and others tests may be used.

NTs never recommend Nutritional Therapy as a replacement for medical advice, but may work alongside other healthcare practitioners involved in the client’s care to attain safer and superior results.