THERAPEUTIC DIET
Insight into the power of diet was provided long ago in the Mediterranean by the Great Physician Hippocrates. Today the Mediterranean Diet is championed as preventing heart disease, reducing inflammation and much more. Is it any wonder that the home of Hippocrates is where this diet evolved?
There are several key ingredients around which we consider the question of diet – such as goals, lifestyle, heredity, workplace, individual health conditions, modern research and historical precedent. However, quality is fundamentally a key consideration. Organically grown foods have consistently demonstrated higher nutrient concentrations ounce-for-ounce than their non-organic competitors. Additionally, the non-organic foods often contain environmental toxins, insecticides, and heavy metals that require even more nutrients for the body to adequately process. Therefore organic foods are preferred when possible.
Another consideration is the general orientation of diet according to blood type. Dr. James D’Adamo is credited in pioneering this useful framework. He discovered that different blood types do better with various diets. Such as: a primarily vegetarian (Type A), a high-protein low-carbohydrate (Type O), or a more omnivorous (Type B).
Finally, and very importantly, we offer Food Intolerance Testing. This identifies categories of individual foods – and combinations of foods eaten together – that a person is not able to properly break down, digest and utilize. Because the process of digestion for these foods is incomplete, the byproducts of their maldigestion become toxins or irritants to the system. And while certain food intolerances may show clinical trends, where that irritation arises is largely determined by genetic susceptibility. For example, individuals intolerant to potato often experience kidney problems. However, in certain cases the kidney problem may manifest as arthritic pain because the kidneys have reached their tipping point and are no longer adequately filtering wastes from the blood stream – hence deposits forming in the joints. Most commonly each individual has one primary intolerance and one combination – though this can vary. Unlike food allergies, most intolerances are present at birth, do not require prior exposure to the food, and do not seem to change over time.