If you’ve lived for any length of time, you know the phrase, “You are what you eat.” But you may not realize just how true this phrase is: What you eat has everything to do with how well your body operates — or doesn’t.
Mark Hyman, M.D., the esteemed functional medicine physician and best-selling author, has said: “Food isn’t like medicine, it is medicine, and it’s our number one tool for creating the vibrant health we deserve.”
But how does this work exactly? And what keeps us from being as healthy as we want to be? It often comes down to one word: inflammation.
What is Inflammation?
It’s easy to understand inflammation when you think of how your body reacts to a virus or an injury. Inflammation is your immune system’s natural response to infection or physical trauma — and it’s necessary to survive. With this acute inflammation, your immune system sends white blood cells to the injury to start the healing process.
That’s not the type of inflammation we’re discussing here, however. What we’re talking about is chronic inflammation — the kind that you can’t see and may not even know is occurring. With chronic inflammation, your immune system continues to produce white blood cells to fight what it perceives as a continuous attack. Eventually, this inflammation damages healthy cells, tissues, and organs.
Many people discover they have chronic inflammation when they’re diagnosed with another disease or condition, such as an autoimmune disease or rheumatoid arthritis. But often you don’t even know you have inflammation — yet, this “hidden” inflammation is at the root of all chronic illnesses. And it can lead to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dementia, depression, cancer, and much more.
Causes of Inflammation
Many things can cause inflammation, including hidden or chronic infections, stress, lack of exercise, and hidden environmental toxins or allergens. Yet, one of the primary culprits is the food we eat — specifically, a diet high in sugar, refined flour, processed foods, and inflammatory fats like trans fats.
These foods are also linked to poor gut health, which can cause a wide range of issues, like allergies, asthma, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. And over time, an unhealthy gut can leak toxins and harmful bacteria into the body. Also (and importantly), when your gut microbiome isn’t thriving, you can have malnutrition issues — even though you may be eating enough, or even too much, food.
Our Providers Want to Help You!
Contact our New Patient Coordinator for a Free Phone Consultation. She can explain our protocols and fees in more detail so that you can enjoy a more vibrant and healthy life!
Contact our New Patient Coordinator at 972-960-4800
Good Nutrition is the Key to Vibrant Health
Reducing inflammation and maintaining a healthy gut microbiome are essential for a healthy body. That’s why it’s vital to have proper nutrition. So, what does that look like, exactly? What should you be eating to combat inflammation and give your body a fighting chance? Here are the basics:
- Eat the rainbow. Whole plant foods have the anti-inflammatory nutrients that your body needs. So, eat a rainbow of colorful fruits and veggies — and make sure you fill half your plate with them at mealtimes.
- Choose whole foods. If you can’t pronounce the ingredients on a food label, don’t put that food in your body! Choose unprocessed, unrefined grains and legumes, and whole, fresh, REAL food.
- Get your healthy fats. Olive oil, nuts, and avocados are excellent sources of healthy fat, so add them to your diet and get rid of all that other unhealthy fat. Additionally, include salmon and other oily fish in your diet, as these are fantastic sources of omega-3 fats.
- Make sure your diet includes probiotics. Found in fermented foods, kimchi, unsweetened yogurts, and anything that contains live bacteria, probiotics are vital for maintaining a healthy gut microbiome.
- Check for food allergies. You could eat the healthiest diet in the world, but it may not be healthy for YOU because of an unknown food allergy! Gluten and dairy are common allergies, but you may have others. And you can’t know for sure without proper nutritional testing. After all, your body is unique, so you need to know exactly how it responds to different foods.
Nutrition Counseling and Testing
We want you to live your best possible life, filled with vibrant health. And the best way to know that you’re getting the right nutrition to fight inflammation and achieve optimum health is to discover what may cause any unwanted condition you have.
Our functional medicine approach means we treat you as an individual — because you are. Your nutritional plan will be yours alone, and we will take the time needed to find out precisely what that should be.
Your health and wellness plan may include nutritional counseling, as well as testing to determine exactly what’s happening in your body. We offer a variety of tests, including:
- Nutritional Testing: To determine how well you are absorbing nutrients, we deliver Genova NutrEval® testing. This testing gives us a better understanding of any nutritional deficiencies that could cause unwanted physical conditions. From this, we can develop a plan to address those deficiencies.
- Food Sensitivity Testing: We offer the ALCAT food sensitivity testing to determine which foods and other substances may trigger unwanted inflammation. This includes a personal nutrition plan based on your immune system, that helps you make the best possible food choices.
- Gastrointestinal Testing: The Genova GI Effects® testing provides valuable insight into digestive performance, gut inflammation, and the gut microbiome. This testing can reveal important information about the root cause of many common gastrointestinal symptoms. Doing this helps us pinpoint imbalances in your gut so we can correct them and improve your overall health.
Protocols for Nutrition Testing
If you are interested in having any of the above tests completed by one of our providers, please call us! We will have you complete a health questionnaire and schedule a 30-minute phone consultation with your provider to go over all your symptoms and concerns. We will then order your testing and have it sent to you.
Once you have your test completed and results are in, we will get you scheduled for a 30- to 60- minute (depending on the test) consultation to go over your results, along with recommendations on how we can address your specific issues.
The human body is a miraculous thing, and once we take steps to restore you to health, you’ll start to feel better quickly. And you’ll be on your way to a better quality of life filled with vitality and improved health and wellness!
Our Providers Want to Help You!
Contact our New Patient Coordinator for a Free Phone Consultation. She can explain our protocols and fees in more detail so that you can enjoy a more vibrant and healthy life!
Contact our New Patient Coordinator at 972-960-4800
Or complete the form below and she will contact you. There is no obligation to have this consultation. If you feel we are a good fit for you, our New Patient Coordinator can also get you booked for your first appointment.
"*" indicates required fields
