3 Nourishing Bowls Nutritional Therapy

This sparks joy.

Instead of following arbitrary rules in the way one eats or exercises, I encourage my clients to listen to their bodies and decide what is best for them EACH day. Eating and exercising for the right reasons will support one’s #adrenalhealth, reduce stress and lead to enjoyment along with physical and mental health. • Choose to eat food items without guilt, honor hunger signals, and trust your body. You may decide to fast 16 hours one day and then the next day your body tells you it wants #breakfast— so you eat. Feed your body nutrient dense foods. Find balance. No need to count calories. • Exercising shouldn’t be a chore. Choose to work out because your body feels up to it. Find #movement that makes you feel good. I have days where my body feels strong and I choose to take a spin or a #vinyasaflow class. And there are days when my body tells me to take it easy and I choose to go on a walk or sign up for a restorative yoga class. • HONOR YOUR INTUITIVE SENSE 💚

Diving into some functional testing this month — adrenals, cycle mapping, and hormones. I completed the DUTCH adrenal test last year and found out my little #adrenals were doing a good job of handling stress. I had to simply take a basic #adaptogen to maintain resiliency. • Your adrenals are part of the HPA- Axis (hypothalamus/pituitary/adrenal). The hypothalamus manages four aspects of the body: the nervous system, the emotional response, the immune system and the endocrine system. Messages are relayed between these glands to help monitor various functions. The adrenals play a significant role in our stress handling system as well as our sex hormones, #bloodsugar, energy, #inflammation and #immunehealth. • Starting next week, I will be collecting samples for 25 days! The results will include an analysis of my hormones throughout the entire menstrual cycle, cortisol patterns, oxidative stress markers, and adrenal sufficiency.

When clients bring their lab work to a session I always discuss the lab ranges that come with the test results versus the functional range of which have been carefully researched and formulated as parameters of good health. • You may be surprised to know that the lab ranges are simply the averages of all the people who have had bloodwork analyzed by that lab in the last year. So this means that many who have come to the lab may be in some form of poor health which skews the results even more and we can assume that many of them have undiagnosed conditions which are then added into the mix of defining what is normal. • It would be wise to find out what constitutes good health by evaluating one’s numbers against functional ranges. These ranges have been determined by healthcare providers and researchers who focus on preventative medicine.

My kind of breakfast 💚!! My heart sings when I get to combine my love of nutrient dense foods along with beautiful pottery. #joy#realbutterinmytinybowl #gettingthroughwinter

Digestive health- the core of your immune and brain health. You can be experiencing gut dysbiosis without having any obvious gut symptoms. Symptoms of poor digestive health include: eczema(rashes), anxiety, mood swings, headaches/migraines, hormone imbalance as well as fatigue and sinus infections. If you have an autoimmune condition, take a look at your gut health! 🔎 • I have clients take a food sensitivity as well as a stool test (GI MAP). This single sample stool test uses advanced DNA testing to assess levels of healthy bacteria, pathogenic bacteria, parasites, yeast, and viruses. It also looks for inflammation, immune function, as well as digestion and absorption. It gives a comprehensive look at your microbiome and if there is a chronic illness or gut dysbiosis, this test will find the imbalance. • I almost always run a food sensitivity and stool test together. Just identifying and eliminating food sensitivities won't help us heal any gut dysfunctions. Conversely, we can't heal the gut if we keep eating foods that are inflammatory. If all we do is identify food sensitivities, but we don’t simultaneously address the root cause or causes that are driving digestive issues, it is highly likely you will simply develop new sensitivities as you shift the focus of eating to different foods. Inversely, if we identify digestive dysfunction and we don’t eliminate current offending foods, you will likely not achieve complete healing either. One test without the other isn’t meaningful or useful. • Don’t guess about your health, get tested. #functionalnutrition