Nutrition at Naturna

When preparing to conceive, simple changes to your diet can greatly enhance fertility. Most women don’t realize that certain foods can help boost your ability to conceive while others may deter it. Many foods could be inhibiting your chances to conceive by making the body an unpleasant and unsafe environment for a baby. What’s on your plate could also be inhibiting the necessary hormones from being released as well as endangering the uterus and ovaries by creating fibroids or worsening growth of cysts. The journey to increase your fertility begins by increasing your intake of low-glycemic carbohydrates, protein from non-animal sources, omega-3 fatty acids, and a list of minerals such as zinc, selenium, iron, and CoQ10. Avoiding high-glycemic carbohydrates, animal proteins, processed foods, alcohol, dairy, and gluten can also help. The guidelines we provide at the Naturna Institute can help you find the happy medium that is best for your body by making sustainable changes to your diet little by little.

Nutrition can affect your mood, metabolism, and hormones. It is first important to understand that many products can contain added hormones, like non-organic meats and dairy, and many products used for cooking contain harmful substances that can also impact your hormone levels. Since we integrate our treatment methods, we often suggest dietary changes for patients to support the proper balance of hormones. When it comes to hormonal balance, the first step for nutrition might be a detoxification, or detox. Although the term detox is popular nowadays, we stay away from trendy diets and instead use a healthy detox plan, specific for your needs, to help eliminate to toxins that are already present in your body. In addition, we incorporate several general principles to nutrition for hormone health, like clean eating to avoid pesticides, preservatives, and added hormones, as well as incorporating a variety of nutrients into your diet. What makes nutrition at Naturna special is that we know that every person’s body is different: while eating well is a good place to start, learning about your own specific needs is what makes our integrative approach effective. We will use nutrition in combination with our other treatment modalities to approach your hormone balance from all angles so that we can find, treat, and eliminate the problem for good.

Without a doubt, a nutritious, well-balanced eating plan can be one of the greatest gifts you give to your developing baby. Keeping a healthy lifestyle throughout pregnancy, as well as before and after, is key for both baby and mother. Important steps to a healthy pregnancy include eating a balanced diet; gaining the right amount of weight; enjoying regular physical activity; taking a vitamin and mineral supplement if recommended by a physician; and avoiding alcohol, tobacco and other harmful substances. Nutrient needs during pregnancy are not static, they vary during the course of pregnancy. Women need to consume a minimum of 175 grams of carbohydrates or about 50 percent of your total caloric intake. You want to choose good carbohydrates such as vegetables, fruits, and legumes instead of processed foods; this may help women manage pregnancy weight gain. Pregnant women should take in at least 25 grams of protein a day, 13 grams of healthy fats a day, and increase water intake while eliminating alcohol and caffeine intake. Pregnant women should also take supplements to help facilitate a healthy pregnancy, such as folate, calcium, Vitamins A and D, and iron.

The period of time after giving birth is very important for both nourishment and repair. The body has been supporting a growing baby, with higher demands put on the body. Proper nutrition is extremely important for tissue repair, blood loss, and re-balancing hormones and neurochemistry. At Naturna we incorporate the wisdom of eastern traditions with modern recipes to give you an easy, accessible and delicious postpartum program.

One of the most frustrating things that many women experience is weight gain that seems to come out of the blue. There are so many diet plans, pills, and other alternatives that claim to make you lose weight. But do they work? No. What’s worse is that most of them are not based in nutrition, health, or medicinal knowledge, so they are often temporary fixes that don’t last, and they fail to account for the differences in our bodies that cause weight retention and weight gain. At Naturna, we consider each person’s approach to weight loss as a new goal, and the nutritional services we provide are based in our understanding of your body’s constitution and needs. We use the basics of good nutrition to support a healthy and balanced diet, while also adding in specific recommendations based on you. For example, if your weight gain is due to a hormone change or imbalance (such as menopause or PCOS), your nutrition plan will include the nutrients needed to balance your hormones, helping regulate weight, and include elimination of foods that may increase the issues causing the weight gain. In contrast, people who want to lose weight that they have gained slowly over time will have a different approach, featuring more gradual changes that introduce the body to a healthier nutrition naturally. Although we offer nutritional consultations in isolation, we also incorporate nutritional suggestions into our acupuncture sessions, and encourage all patients to try the different modalities we offer.

A healthy diet creates a healthy gut and that can also protect your body from autoimmunity. You can learn to manage your autoimmune disease, and have a perfectly normal and enjoyable life. It is important, though, to see a doctor and practitioner who specialize in these types of diseases, follow your treatment plan, and adopt a healthy lifestyle. Ways to adapt a healthy lifestyle with an autoimmune disease include, eating nutritious and well balanced meals, reducing or eliminating inflammatory and allergenic foods, getting sufficient rest, incorporating regular exercise without overdoing it, and reducing the stress factors in your life.

Detoxification requires a specific set of nutrients, antioxidants, and amino acids to assist in the breaking down of these substances. What we eat can drastically affect each of our bodily systems. While some foods can assist detoxification, other foods may clog us up and cause health issues and discomfort such as bloating, gas, diarrhea, headache, or even sinus congestion. You may not know you are sensitive to these foods because the symptoms may not immediately occur after consuming the food. However, through Naturna’s cleansing program, you will be better able to identify which foods your body reacts to well and which ones it does not. The program lasts 10-21 days and is meant to introduce essential nutrients and botanicals you need to efficiently cleanse your body of toxins.