Healthy Eating Challenge

 

What is naturopathic nutrition?
Naturopathy is a system of healthcare using certain principles to guide the way a practitioner works, with ‘first do no harm’ as key. We also look to support the whole person, not just one specific problem, as we don’t want to only treat symptoms, but find the root cause and deal with that effectively. One important principle is that the therapist (practitioner) is there to guide, support, and teach, rather than dictate to the client, which is why I created the HEC. Naturopathic nutrition is the use of food and lifestyle interventions to support the bodily systems in the ways described above.

What made you decide that you should become a nutritional therapist?
After years of research for my own health, I decided that I needed a scientific underpinning of what we actually need as humans to survive. Understanding that we are inherently made of the foods we eat, I decided to study naturopathic nutrition rather than other modalities because of the integrated and functional approach it takes.

What's the HEC?
It's a five-week course of 90 minute sessions. There’s a 45 minute nutrition workshop followed by a 45 minutes exercise class run by a personal trainer. Within the workshops I cover key themes such as ‘What to eat and why’, eating proteins, fats and carbohydrates, ‘How much should I have, what are the reasons for this?’ We also talk about supporting some systems of the body such as digestion, detoxification and elimination. I couldn't do this course without mentioning stress and resilience, and supporting mood through the food we eat. It's a course aimed at providing the fundamentals of nutrition to look at the diet in a deeper way, in a supportive group environment, helping people commit to lifestyle changes. I make a point to spend some time talking about sourcing produce, as where we get our food from is important too.



So how is the course different to what you do in one-to-one consultations?
The course is in a group which provides extra support, and is a broader exploration of nutrition for understanding key themes, like blood sugar, digestion, detoxification, and of course the exercise class too. The 1:1 work is specifically tailored to clients’ own health goals or challenges, for example they may have a digestive complaint.

One of the greatest things about both the courses and the 1:1, is that with simple dietary and lifestyle intervention, we see energy levels increase, unwanted excess weight drop off, less of a reliance on stimulants like coffee and sugar, which means more vibrancy in day to day life.

What's the hottest topic in nutritional therapy?
The subject I'm really drawn to at the moment is the impact of diet and lifestyle on genetics. We sequenced the human genome over ten years ago, our DNA provides a blueprint of characteristics or traits for potential diseases for example breast cancer. It is known that whilst our genes are our blueprint, they don't necessarily determine our health outcomes, for example, they just hold the potential for conditions/traits. It is the environment (diet, lifestyle) that have the ability to dictate whether the traits are actioned. Nutrigenomics is the investigation of diet and lifestyle (environment) and its impact on genetic expression.

This extraordinarily exciting new area of scientific exploration plays a huge role, in my mind, to the future of healthcare. By giving personalised and relevant nutritional and lifestyle interventions we step further away from the 'one size fits all' approach and closer to a more functional and integrated approach to healthcare. For this reason, I have been participating in a Euro-wide study with 250 other people, providing my own genetic information and other data for analysis.

Millie Pollitt uses a personalised approach, practicing from several locations across Nottingham.

The next five-week Healthy Eating Challenge starts on Tuesday 21 July, Tiger Boe Centre, Clarendon Street, 7.15-8.45pm.

Nutritional Resilience website