I’ve been spending time in the early mornings weeding my garden. Weeding isn’t everyone's favorite, but I enjoy it now more than ever. My biggest reason, is that at one point, I couldn’t do it for more than 5 minutes without becoming miserable from seasonal allergies. Now my seasonal allergies are completely gone and I can garden all day if I want to. Just yesterday, I noticed a layer of bright green pollen coating my car and sidewalks. Previously that would have made me miserable. It didn’t. Not one bit.
Towards the end of my experience with seasonal allergies, I began taking over the counter allergy medication. I didn’t look into alternatives, I just wanted relief. The thought that changing my diet could help didn’t cross my mind even though I had been interested in nutrition since I was a teenager. I didn’t discover it could, until putting to use what I was learning in my training to become a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP).
Other things that went away when I improved my nutrition, digestion, and began eating in a way that didn’t cause stress to my body included: menstrual cramps, nighttime Charlie horses, afternoon energy dips, irritability before meals, and more. Honestly, almost every little thing that bothered me, things that most people (including me at the time) consider a “normal” part of life and aging, went away.
Now I know that improving nutrition (and other foundations of optimal health) can go a long way towards improving health. Along the way, I’ve met people who’ve done things with nutrition that their Doctors consider unexplainable and miraculous. The thing is, it’s not only explainable, it’s scientific.
There are many amazing things being done with nutrition today that more people need to know about. Here are three of my favorite examples:
Dr. Terry Wahls was in a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis and on her way to being bedridden. She took matters into her own hands and developed and followed the Wahls Protocol. Within a year she was walking and doing an 18 mile bike ride.
Dr. Kelly Brogan is a psychiatrist who helped herself with nutrition when her own training couldn’t, and now helps others using nutrition instead of medications.
Mickey Trescott & Angie Alt both improved their health with nutrition on the Autoimmune Protocol Diet. They were involved in the first EVER medical study (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of the Autoimmune Protocol for people with Chron’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Guess what? The results were very exciting!
“Clinical remission was achieved by week 6 by 11/15 (73%) of study participants, and all 11 maintained clinical remission during the maintenance phase of the study. We did not hypothesize, a priori, that clinical remission would be achieved so early (week 6). Indeed, this proportion of participants with active IBD achieving clinical remission by week 6 rivals that of most drug therapies for IBD . . . (Konijeti, et al. 2017)”
Um yeah, AMAZING!!!!
So basically, my point is, if you have a health problem, there’s probably a lot you can do to help yourself with nutrition. Knowing there’s hope and possibility is the first step!
Reference:
Konijeti GG, Kim N, Lewis JD, et al. Efficacy of the Autoimmune Protocol Diet for Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. 2017;23(11):2054-2060. doi:10.1097/MIB.0000000000001221.
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