You Are What You Eat

Finally in the UK people are beginning to pay attention to the quality of theirfood! Ever since the rapid development of agro-chemicals from the 1930’s onwards, food has generally been plentiful and cheap, but this has come at a huge cost to quality. Intensive farming means that crops are being grown using NPK fertilisers alone and soils are being depleted of a wide range of essential minerals. High yields also depend upon heavy use of pesticides and fungicides, which not only persist into the end product, they also weaken the plant’s own adaptive mechanisms. The long-term impact of GM crops is not yet known, but since the overriding factor in their development is profit, it seems unlikely that they will carry health benefits.

So all the old advice about eating a balanced diet still applies, and you will reduce your chemical intake if you buy organic and cook from fresh as much as possible. Modern nutritionists all agree that the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowances) are pretty outdated, having been set at a level below which you would expect to see deficiency symptoms. In their place we now have the ODA (Optimum Daily Allowance) which is set at a figure to maintain optimum health –often several times higher than the RDA’s. And these are baseline figures: many factors put extra demands on the system and require even higher levels, such as city living, high stress levels, prescription drugs and particularly smoking. For full information get hold of Patrick Holford’s Optimum Nutrition Bible – it includes several self-tests for you to work out your own requirements.

If you think you are not getting enough from your diet there are loads of supplements out there – all promising great health benefits! How do you choose what your body needs for optimum health? Look at what your symptoms are telling you. If you can’t shake off colds and flu look to boost your immune system with vit C, zinc, echinacae; for digestive problems think about probiotics. Sometimes multiple formulas are a really good way of giving your body a boost. But underlying many common ailments are problems with heavy metals like lead and mercury: if these are present, they will inhibit absorption of essential minerals. Fortunately kinesiology can detect their presence and find out what the body needs to remove them successfully.

There is also a huge rise in the numbers of people suffering with over-reactions of the immune system: allergies, asthma, eczema, IBS, skin problems. Is this because our environment is becoming so polluted? Or are our systems incapable of coping? The best approach is to tackle the problem from both directions – work on reducing exposure to pollutants and allergens at the same time as strengthening the system.

What can you do if you are experiencing allergic reactions? Start looking for a pattern – is it a particular food or set of circumstances? If so, try to cut it out for a period and see if the symptoms change; reintroduce a little bit and see what happens. If this isn’t possible there are lots of ways of getting an allergy test: GPs and hospitals can do skin prick tests; the BER machines and others measure skin response; HK does it by monitoring muscle response. Most practitioners have a wide range of foods, chemicals, pollens, organisms etc to test you with and can give you the results instantly. HK also includes a correction for allergy which helps the body to recognise the energy pattern of identified substances so that it can deal with them appropriately. However it can’t always be done straight away – often the body needs preparatory work beforehand because it may dump toxins afterwards.

Good management of nutrition and appropriate supplementation where necessary is a really essential part of everyone’s health kit. For individual advice see a practitioner: HK will test what is appropriate for your body at that time and identify the priority areas to work on for a smooth healing process.