Nutrition at Body Craft
From our standpoint, we believe that nutrition is influential, if not the most influential, on whether we are healthy or not. While the notion that nutrition is important to our well-being is not new; what we know now is that our well-being is inseparable from the kinds foods and the type of nutrients we intake. Early supporters of the use of nutritional substances, including in high doses (supplements), such as vitamins and minerals, for treatment of disease, began around the turn of the 20th century. The most prominent of these proponents was Linus Pauling; a scientist and a two time Noble Prize Winner who coined the term “orthomolecular” (the right molecules in the right amount) therapy to highlight his research findings of high dose Vitamin C in the treatment of heart disease and cancer. From these earlier notions of orthomolecular therapy advances in DNA research, nutrition, and related medical sciences have helped to inform the treatment of disease with vitamins, minerals, and other natural substances. Currently, these disciplines provide the most up-to-date recommendations on the use of guided supplementation for the treatment of disease. As part of our medical interventions, we provide individualized nutritional counseling based on our three tiers of our nutritional protocol; DNA testing, entailing guidance to eating uniquely for your genetic make-up; a guided fasting protocol with essential nutrient supplementation; and a prebiotic formula that helps to nourish our internal and external environment.
The importance of adequate nutrition, as it relates to our health, cannot be over emphasized. Consequently, we believe that disease processes are often associated to poor or inadequate nutrition and mineral imbalances. This has a direct effect on our internal and external environments. More importantly, we believe that the internal environment, meaning both the environment in which your cells live, as well as the extracellular matrix (ECM), the lattice work that connects cells and tissues of the human organism, has a direct connection to how we adapt to our external environment as well as how we manage disease process. To this point it is important to understand the difference between our internal and external environment.
Our internal environment is not what we think of as that which is beyond our mouth. As a matter fact, our digestive tract, which begins at the mouth, is actually continuous with our skin. In other words the skin and the digestive tract are in fact one continuous tissue. Therefore, our intestinal tract is in direct relationship with the external world and for that reason it is still the external environment. What is our internal environment then? Our internal environment is that which lies beyond the walls of our intestinal tract. The space in our intestinal tract and the lining of that tract is then our external environment and beyond those walls is our internal environment. All of our nutrition, our food stuffs, must first go through the mechanical and chemical break down from the mouth and stomach respectively. Then, it is further digested by other enzymatic process as well as our intestinal microbiome. Once our food stuffs are in an absorbable form, they are then transported through the intestinal wall and take up into our blood stream which in turn will nourish our cells and ECM so that they can perform their respective functions.
Therefore, the nutritional status of our internal environment is of up most importance, specifically the internal ionic concentrations of both the cell and the ECM. The ionic concentration is dependent on many factors which include the health of our digestive system, our microbiome diversity and health, and nutritional intake. Therefore, we must eat foods or take supplements that have specific minerals in order to acquire an optimal ionic state within our cells and their respective ECM. This is important because when the ECM and cells have optimal mineral states they equally optimize their functions of receiving input from the external environment and also adequately carry out corresponding outputs from the brain. Moreover, an optimal nutrition state is essential in supporting and maintaining a dynamic equilibrium state within the organism because optimal cellular and ECM environments respond adequately to stimulus.
Our interventions at Body Craft offer three distinct services that will help to restore and optimize the dynamic mineral and nutritional balance of cells and the external cellular matrix (ECM). To adequately address any nutritional imbalances, we must first evaluate, through specific testing, how you uniquely respond to food. One of these services is DNA testing. What this translates to is that in order for us to adequately prescribe a specific diet regimen we would need to accurately know what your body digests well and what it does not. This test will also inform us about what your body's unique basic needs are in terms of vitamins, minerals, and also how sensitive your body is to carbohydrates and fats. In other words, your own DNA, what you are comprised of, dictates your unique dietary interventions. Therefore, this test and its findings result in uniquely tailored dietary interventions that are just right for you which is in stark contrast to a fad related approach to your dietary needs. A DNA test entails an in house saliva swab, one month's time for analysis, and a print out of the DNA test's interpretation.
Along with DNA testing we also offer guided fasting. Fasting is a scientifically and medically proven intervention that helps the body restore function while at the same time help the body get rid of excess waste (what is known as metabolic debris), a product of metabolism. Just like our body has to get rid of large waste, so do our cells and our ECM need to get rid of waste. It is important to emphasize that our ECM and our cells participate in metabolism which results in waste products. It is therefore possible for cells to accumulate waste which has a detrimental effect on their function. During a fast, cells have the opportunity to further breakdown these waste products of metabolism. This is known as autophagy. This process takes place on a daily basis and optimally with specific vitamins and minerals. As a result, fasting gives the body the opportunity to get rid of built up waste and thus essentially detoxifying. Moreover, it also gives your body the opportunity to rest from energy production from the digestion of food and instead focus on rest, repair, and elimination. At Body Craft, we will support your fast with specific and an essential nutrient rich natural supplement which is solely used to support metabolic processes of your body. Interestingly, we have found that fasting relieves many symptoms that are related to inflammatory and degenerative disease processes. This is remarkable in that patients who fast are able to experience a relief of symptoms in a short period of time.
The last intervention, a prebiotic formula, will enhance the metabolic processes (break down and processing of food), nourishes the microbiome (microorganisms of the digestive tract), and aid in digestion of food. Research regarding the health of our digestive tract point to both a healthy balanced diet as well as a healthy microbial ecosystem. The ecosystem we are referring to is the vast array of microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungus) that inhabit our gastrointestinal system, otherwise known as our gut, is collectively known as the microbiome. The microbiome and its health has been associated to a diverse number of disease processes including type II diabetes, arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome etc. Moreover, our health is dependent on specific nutrients which are difficult to acquire through our diet but can be made readily available by our gastrointestinal bacteria. Specific nutrients that are important to our health for example are short chain fatty acids, Vitamin K etc. These micronutrients become bioavailable from the breakdown of their precursors by our gut bacteria. The prebiotic formula is rich in nutrients that are essential to our microbiome whose breakdown byproduct are utilized by our own cells for nourishment as well as signaling which has a direct result on our health.
Nutrition is crucial to good health. We maintain the importance of nutrition by offering proven and evidence based supported nutritional supplements which include a diverse list of natural substances (e.g. Western and Eastern herbs, homeopathics, vitamins and minerals etc.). Individualized supplementation is guided by your unique metabolic needs based on your genetic profile. Digestion and metabolic processes are supported by nutrients specific for your microorganisms living in your digestive system and fasting allows you to rest, digest, and detoxify. These are the key elements of our nutritional support to your health.