“What shall I have for dinner?” I wonder how many times we have said that to ourselves. Does it need to be quick and easy? Are you trying to please several people with different tastes? Are you passionate about cooking and eating or does food just serve a purpose?

Whatever your attitude to food, your budget, your likes and dislikes, we all need to eat – usually several times a day.

As a nutritional therapist, I believe that eating should be pleasurable, and what we eat should provide us with the building blocks for good health. The human body is a wonderfully clever thing. It’s constantly repairing itself, battling invaders and creating energy. Each organ, system and gland carries out its own functions that rely on chemical messengers such as hormones and neurotransmitters to get jobs done. Without the nutrients they require, we can’t expect them to function well. Our lifestyles sometimes dictate that we incorporate foods that provide the body with excess work to do instead of providing those building blocks. Consequently, our health can suffer. Nutritional therapy looks at you as an individual and it’s my role to advise you on which foods and nutrients your body needs to help you achieve good health. Nutritional therapy is backed up by scientific research and can work alongside conventional medicine.

A nutritional therapy consultation can help you get the right balance of nutrients to feel well, perform well and think positively. In Edinburgh, or via Skype, I consider factors such as stress, diet and lifestyle and apply the latest research in nutritional therapy to address any imbalances. There are many health issues that dietary adjustments and an improvement of nutritional status can help to address.

I frequently work with digestive problems such as irritable bowel syndrome, I give advice on hormonal issues such as PCOS or fertility, and I support clients with energy problems including chronic fatigue. Weight loss nutrition programmes, as well as weight gain nutrition programmes are also a big part of my work.

If we do a lot of sport or physical exercise, we also put great demands on the body and sports nutrition can help prevent your health suffering, speed up recovery and healing and get you performing at your peak.

A nutritional therapy consultation generally involves:

Nutritional Therapy is the application of nutrition science in the promotion of health and peak performance. Nutritional Therapy can identify potential nutritional imbalances and how these contribute to symptoms. This approach allows the nutritional therapist to work with people on many levels by addressing nutritional imbalances and supporting the body towards maintaining health. (BANT 2011)

The pace of modern life often results in poor dietary choices, contributing to many chronic health problems. Scientific research indicates that many health issues can be improved through dietary adjustments and increasing nutrient intake. Nutritional therapy works in conjunction with, or as a safe alternative to conventional medicine.

One of my aims is to address the root cause of your symptoms. By discovering the origins of poor health we have higher chances of overcoming the problems in the long term. The latest research in nutritional medicine is applied in any advice I give and I will devise a tailor-made programme to suit your condition, individual needs and lifestyle.

While even the smallest dietary changes can lead to great improvements in 
well-being, it is likely that I will recommend supplements for a certain time period as these may help you get well faster.

In some cases, such as when considering sports nutrition programmes, fertility nutrition programmes or chronic fatigue nutrition programmes, functional testing may be advised to help you as efficiently and quickly as possible. Examples of tests are hair mineral analysis, stool analysis, adrenal stress hormone index, female hormone panel and intolerance testing.