Nutrient-rich foods have the power to promote your health and heal disease. Or your diet can do the opposite. Foods that are low in nutrients deplete your energy, weaken your immune system, and lead to illness and disease.
Nutrition is never an afterthought at Docere Integrated Medicine; it’s an integral part of our team’s holistic approach to your care. Your body can’t function without nutrients, much less support a thriving life.
The nutrients that are essential for your health must come from your diet. That means nutrient therapy is one of the most vital aspects of your health care.
You need to take in a certain amount of nutrients every day to be sure your body has the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats it needs to produce energy, build and repair tissues, and keep your brain, heart, and other organs functioning.
Even when you do your best to eat a well-balanced diet, it’s still hard to get your daily requirement of all the essential nutrients. Every time you substitute healthy foods with less nutritious choices — and who doesn’t do that at least occasionally — you have an even higher risk of falling short on some nutrients.
You can also end up with deficiencies when your body uses more nutrients than usual. Any time your body is under excessive stress — whether good or bad — it uses more nutrients, quickly causing a deficiency.
Your body needs more nutrients if you:
In each of these examples, you have unique nutritional needs. During nutrient therapy, we evaluate your health, lifestyle, and diet. Then we identify problems and create a plan to restore the nutrients you need.
In the early stages of most chronic diseases, you can prevent the condition by changing your diet and lifestyle. For example, before you develop Type 2 diabetes, you go through a stage where your blood sugar is elevated, but not high enough to be diagnosed with the disease.
At this stage, dietary and nutritional changes can lower your blood sugar and successfully prevent the full-blown condition from developing. Once you’re diagnosed with diabetes, dietary changes become the foundation of your treatment.
This ability to prevent and treat disease holds true for nearly all chronic health conditions, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease. At every stage, chronic diseases need ongoing nutrient therapy.
After evaluating your nutritional status, we target the changes needed to prevent your chronic disease from progressing. We also look at body wide issues that contribute to chronic diseases, such as systemic inflammation. Then we work with you to create a meal plan you can stick with that sustains your ongoing health.
Every cell in your body produces energy using a complex process that depends on the presence of nutrients. If one of these essential nutrients are missing, the energy cycle is disrupted, and your energy supply drops.
During your nutrient therapy, we can teach you the foods you should eat to sustain energy production, as well as foods to avoid. For example, eating a candy bar will give you a quick boost of energy, followed by an equally quick drop in blood sugar that makes you feel fatigued.
Your immune system protects you from diseases and infections, and identifies and destroys harmful bacteria, viruses, and other substances. However, it can’t fulfill any of these vital roles without an adequate supply of nutrients such as protein, zinc, and iron as well as vitamins A, C, D, E, and the B vitamins.
Poor nutrition prevents your immune system from mounting a healthy battle against invading pathogens. Additionally, your nutritional status directly regulates immune activities. We identify nutrient shortages affecting your immune system and create a customized treatment plan.
Whether you want to improve athletic performance, prevent disease, or maintain your overall health, nutrient therapy can help. To learn more, call Docere Integrated Medicine or book an appointment online with us.