John Arts Abundant Living www.johnarts.co.nz

Healing is usually possible, even if curing is not. My discipline of nutritional medicine is all about helping obtain the maximum healing even though not greatly influencing accumulated damage caused by disease.

Supplements play an important role as they allow us to introduce nutrients at levels that promote healing and put pressure on underlying disease processes.
My goal is to get people as well as possible. In many cases this requires team work with other professionals, especially the person's GP. Once we have a medical diagnosis, we set about using diet, supplements and other lifestyle measures to help body processes that have been affected by disease.
Some diseases, such as Polymyalgia Rheumatica, are relatively straightforward. PMR is an often debilitating autoimmune muscle disease. The main symptoms are muscle stiffness, pain and fatigue.
Once diagnosed by a doctor, the treatment is based on the steroid prednisone to suppress the immune system and reduce inflammation. The goal is to get relief from symptoms, including muscle pain, and then to slowly reduce prednisone to encourage the adrenal glands to restart production of natural steroids and finally restore someone back to normal.
My role is to support various body processes during and after steroid treatment. For example, fatigue is part of PMR so we need to add a range of nutrients at levels that encourage the return of normal energy as prednisone is reduced. These include compounds like coenzyme Q10, acetyl-l-carnitine, vitamin D, B vitamins and the antioxidant-building trace elements including selenium, zinc, copper and manganese. We then add various anti-inflammatory nutrients including fish oils. In most cases this approach can greatly help recovery. Give me a call if you need information or specific advice. My online newsletter at: www.johnarts.co.nz and has the extended version of this column.

John Arts is a Nutritional Therapist and founder of Abundant Health. Contact John on 0800 423 559. To read more go to: www.sunlive.co.nz