Exploring the benefits of nutritional therapy
Session two of our wellbeing programme, ‘Nutrition -Optimising Health and Energy’ was delivered by Wendy Hill, Nutritional Therapist, and focused on the benefits of nutritional therapy, and how we can improve our health and wellbeing with the right food and lifestyle choices.
Wendy opened the session by explaining that nutritional therapy is a holistic approach to health that considers the unique nutritional needs of each individual.
It focuses on identifying and addressing the root causes of illness rather than just treating symptoms and by using science-backed methods, nutritional therapy aims to optimise health and support the body’s natural healing processes.
She asked attendees what ‘health’ means to them and to imagine themselves in ten year’s time. She asked: “What will you be doing, and how healthy will you be?” explaining that every single thing we do now is an investment in our future health and wellbeing.
The average number of absenteeism days per year is between 6.1 and 7.8, and poor mental and physical health is responsible for a loss of productivity averaging one day per week, said Wendy, which if you work 5 days a week, is 20% of your week lost.
The group were asked what they reach for when they’re tired. Caffeine and sugar were the main offenders. Wendy explained that caffeine has a half-life of six hours and recommended only drinking it in the mornings or replacing it with herbal tea. She also explained that when we eat sugar and processed foods, we get a rush of glucose which makes the body push insulin out too quickly causing us to ‘crash’. This was contrasted with the positive impacts on our energy levels when we eat healthy whole foods.
Attendees completed several exercises, rating their health, energy and blood sugar scores on a scale of 1-5 to learn more about their current lifestyle and looked at the “Wheel of Life” concept, rating areas of their life such as energy levels, happiness, fitness, work/career and purpose on a scale of 1-10. Wendy explained that if something is out of balance, it can have an impact on our health and wellbeing. Attendees were then asked to look at their highest scoring areas and see what they could do to improve them even further. This prompted some great discussions around what changes attendees wanted to make, with more time for exercise coming out on top.
Wendy then ran through her top five tips for optimising health and energy: hydration, stress, movement, sleep and nutrition. She explored each area in depth, and examined the links between cortisol and melatonin and how we can reduce stress, what foods we can eat to improve our sleep, how movement can improve our overall health, how to get more fibre in our diets, and the benefits of healthy fats.
To round off the session, she gave an example of what a ‘perfect’ day would look like, incorporating everything we discussed throughout the morning, and asked attendees what they’re going to do differently moving forward to improve their health.
