Nutrition & Environmental Medicine
The fundamental principle of nutritional and environmental medicine is to provide the body with the building blocks it needs to carry out growth, repair and detoxification of metabolic wastes. Secondly to minimize or eliminates anything hindering this process. In practice this often means making changes to diet, exercise, lifestyle, the use of supplements etc. This all occurs in line with well established protocols, including a low-reactive diet regime, supplemental nutrient support, heavy metal elimination etc. This approach to medicine can be used in combination with conventional medicine, or in isolation.
Ayurvedic Medicine
Ayurveda is the ancient system of self-healing from yesterday’s India. Some of the fundamental principles include:
• understanding your own body constitution (prakriti) and tailoring your lifestyle according to it
• maximizing digestion and elimination so as to minimize the presence of ‘ama’ (toxin).
• having a regular daily routine (dinacharya) to maintain balance and harmony in one’s life
• understanding the changes in season, age and life circumstances and the effect these have on our current state (vikruti)
• balance our digestive fire (agni) and vitality (ojas)
Raw & Living Foods Approach
The pivotal principle behind the living foods approach is to maximize the amount of live, raw plant-based foods in the diet. The benefit of this is a great increase in the amount of nutrients available from foods, an increase in the amount of plant enzymes available, a huge increase in the bio-photon energy from foods, and an activation of anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and anti-ageing genes. Of course those with low-digestive fire (agni) or a vata constitution may need to make a gradual change to this approach, and individualize their style of living foods, however almost all people can benefit from the vibrant benefit of more living foods in the diet.
Metabolic Typing ®
A fundamental principle of many ancient medicine systems was that each person’s constitution is unique. In practice, this means that dietary and lifestyle recommendations need to be tailored to the individual. Dr Roger Williams came out with a landmark work called “Biochemical Individuality” in the 1920s explaining this in detail. Since this work, extensive work has been carried out, predominantly in the United States, on determining an individual’s predominant homeostatic systems and balancing these through diet and lifestyle. In this sense, Metabolic Typing is a wonderful accompaniment to ayurvedic medicine as it provides an understanding of individuality on a biochemical level, rather than just on an energetic level. This is basically identical to Dr Mercola’s “nutritional typing” system, which was derived from the same research.
Injectable Nutrient Therapy
For those suffering from diseases of the gut, and general cellular dysfunction, absorbing nutrients into the blood-stream can be extremely difficult. This is where nutrients given directly via the injectable route can be extremely helpful. For those with severe viral infections and post-viral fatigue, intravenous vitamin C in particular can be dramatically effective. In other instances, injectable B vitamins, Zinc or other trace minerals can provide much-needed nutritional support.
Bio-identical Hormone Therapy
The bio-identical hormone therapy approach is to replace hormones that are biochemically identical to the compounds produced in the human body. For instance, synthetic progestins have some similar effects in the body to progesterone (the natural progestin), but on many organs have a neutral or even opposite effect to natural progesterone. Therefore supplying the biologically identical forms of hormones can produce excellent results. Generally short-term use of such hormone replacement is recommended and to be backed up by a solid foundational nutritional program to achieve long-term hormonal balance.
Biomesotherapy
Biomesotherapy is a form of injection therapy for musculoskeletal complaints, that utilizes European botanical formulations given in tandem with local injections of saline water to stimulate healing of the local area. Biomesotherapy assists in detoxification and normalising a damaged muscular system. Over 70 million biomesotherapy treatments take place in Europe each year, with excellent results. Treatments are given via a regulated injection device, which delivers a precise and safe injection every time.
Prolotherapy
Prolotherapy is a another form of injection therapy for musculoskeletal complaints which utilizes injection of glucose and xylocaine into ligament attachments to bone, where the glucose inhibits Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) which allows the body to heal chronically damaged ligaments and tendon and complete the inflammatory process. Multiple controlled studies have been conducted on prolotherapy, generally showing a positive tendency towards long-term improvement in ligamentous damage.