John Arts Abundant Living www.johnarts.co.nz

Over the next few months we will be looking at how nutritional therapy can benefit common health problems.

The terms ‘nutritional' and ‘integrative' medicine are effectively the same. The TV series ‘Is Modern Medicine Killing You?' introduced many people to the principles of nutritional/integrative medicine. We will use the term ‘nutritional medicine' (NM) as this better reflects the underlying principle of improving health through nutritional therapy.

NM can be summarised as a healing discipline that uses food, supplements and lifestyle measures to help restore damaged body systems. Most people I help are under the primary care of their family GP. My role is mostly to work alongside medical advice and treatment to put in place nutritional therapy that can help correct underlying imbalances and dysfunctional processes.

A good example is the very common problem of osteoarthritis. The medical approach is based on anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen and diclofenac with surgery as a last resort to replace or repair damaged joints. The NM approach is to reduce joint inflammation by restricting immune system generated inflammation and to add nutrients such as grape seed extract, fish oils, various minerals and other compounds to improve joint function. The outcome is usually less pain.

In most cases the NM therapy will be based on a diet appropriate for the clients' age and health. Invariably I use a diet high in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants and have a balance of fats, carbohydrates and protein. As a general rule our diets are high in simple carbohydrates, low in anti-inflammatory fats and low in many essential nutrients. To this good diet we generally add nutritional supplements. These tend to fall into two categories. The first are health maintenance supplements including vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fish oils and other nutrients such as co-enzyme Q10.

To these maintenance supplements we often add a temporary course of specialist supplements starting with higher initial doses in the first three months before reducing doses and eliminating these temporary products. These can be anything from booster anti-inflammatory/antioxidant formulas to those designed to improve energy production.

Next week we start our NM journey by looking at osteoarthritis and other musculoskeletal disorders and identify key beneficial nutritional therapies. Give me a call if you need help or have questions. To join my weekly newsletter go to www.johnarts.co.nz and visit www.abundant.co.nz

John Arts is the founder of Abundant Health. To contact John phone (local) 578 9051 or 0800 423 559.