​We take this 3-pillar approach and build a - personalized - nutrition plan for YOU! This is not a “one-size fits all” approach to health!​
Glossary Terms for Services
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Allergies and Food Sensitivities
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Allergies and Food Sensitivities A true food allergy is defined as something much different from a food sensitivity because food allergies involve the antibody known as IgE, which leads to an immediate reaction. Depending on the severity of the allergy, a reaction can be a life-threatening event. If you have an a true allergy such as this, you should carry an epi-pen with you at all times. Dietitians can help navigate these allergies by providing you with the knowledge of where and the types of foods that your allergen can often be hidden in, as well as strategies for keeping your immune system strong and healthy to support itself at all times. Food sensitivities, also known as food intolerances are different from a food allergy in that they involve different antibodies, most commonly known as IgG and IgA. The most common mechanism of a sensitivity is difficulty digesting that or those certain food(s). It is entirely possible to have multiple food sensitivities at one time. Some believe that the prevalence of food sensitivities increases with the amount of gut inflammation, stress, lack of sleep, and/or poor immune system function. By finding balance in your nutrition and healing your gut, you may be able to see a decrease in food sensitivity symptoms and may also be able to tolerate these foods better!
Anti-inflammatory
Anti-inflammatory Nutrition is essentially a filter that you can view food through. It view food in terms of “wholeness” and the level of processing it has undergone. While raw food diets may not necessarily solve all of someone’s problems with health, eating whole foods that have been minimally processed (cut, steamed, frozen, etc.) has been shown to have positive impact on your overall health. Why not ADD more to your life by eating MORE whole foods!?
Anti-inflammatory nutrition refers to the ability of certain foods to lower inflammation in the body – therefore giving our immune system a break from trying to manage inflammation from pro-inflammatory foods. Because genetics, lifestyle, psychological and other factors play a role in food tolerability, there is not necessarily a set list of foods that could be considered anti-inflammatory for everyone; However, research has shown that certain foods contain higher amounts of anti-inflammatory compounds (such as antioxidants) and a GREAT rule of thumb is that foods that are whole, minimally-processed and nutrient-dense also tend to be more anti-inflammatory. See our anti-inflammatory handout on our Shop for more information!!
Atherosclerosis
Atherosclerosis is a heart condition where a buildup of plaque occurs in the body’s arteries. There are many variables that can lead to plaque buildup, but one thing that is clear is that what you eat can influence this. See Heart Disease for more information on “Anti-inflammatory Nutrition” for nutritional factors that can help manage inflammation and therefore heart health!!
Autoimmune disease
Autoimmune diseases occur when our body’s immune system attacks our own body’s tissues and/or organs. There are many reasons that an autoimmune can start, and it can also be due to multiple reasons at once including genetics (especially if someone in your family also has an autoimmune disease), environmental factors (such as a very stressful event happening in life), and lifestyle factors (is what you are eating helping or hurting your immune system?). There are over 80 different autoimmune diseases including celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, IBD (such as Ulcerative Colitis and Chron’s), and eosinophilic esophagitis. While an autoimmune disease can certainly make living more difficult, a growing body of research is showing that what people with autoimmune disease eat on a daily basis can make a HUGE impact on the severity of autoimmune disease symptoms. Luckily, autoimmune diseases are one of our specialties here at Inc! And we absolutely love helping those with this condition.
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Cortisol
Cortisol is a hormone in our body that is released in response to stress. Initially, cortisol can increase testosterone in men. However, chronic cortisol can actually cause testosterone to plummet. In women, cortisol can also negatively impact our hormonal system. Too much cortisol in men and women can impair our sleep – a precious way to heal and detoxify naturally within our body – leaving us with issues falling asleep (mind racing) and/or staying asleep (even if it just seems like you are waking up to use the restroom). Recent studies have shown that inadequate sleep in the long term can actually increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (SOURCE and other diseases) In the long term, cortisol suppresses our immune system and can lead to much bigger problems than just a common cold.
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Developing a Healthy Relationship with Food
While the topic of “mental health” seems to be trending these days, we know that your relationship with food is so much more than just a trend – it is something that you have most likely been aware of for your entire life!! And with diet culture, mounds of bad nutrition information in the media, as well as the amount of hyperpalatable ingredients that food product companies wrongfully add to foods that make us “crave” them, it is no wonder we all need a little work when it comes to developing a healthy relationship with food!! Our Mental Health Nutrition platform encompasses 4 pillars of mental health nutrition: (1) Biochemical (the foods we eat make an impact on our inflammation and therefore our relationship with foods); (2) Environmental (the foods and environment we surround ourselves with impacts our relationships with food); Physical (the way we move our bodies affects our relationship with food); and (4) Psychological (the way we think and feel about foods affects our relationship with food!). By looking at these different pillars in much more depth with one of our registered dietitians, you can get really clear in the ways that you can improve your relationship with food, and may even eventually be able to say: “I have a great relationship with food!!!”
Diabetes
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What is diabetes exactly? It is a chronic condition that affects how your body processes glucose (sugar) which is actually, your body’s preferred source of energy in times of significant activity! If you don’t already have diabetes you want want to know what are the symptoms of diabetes, and this can vary from person to person and it can depend on how well they are managing their disease. But typically, common symptoms of diabetes include increased thirst, frequent urination, blurred vision and slow wound healing - Not good at all if you get a cut. If your immune system is working too hard to try and manage your high blood sugar, it may not have the capacity to heal your wounds. That’s how people with diabetes get infections. If a cut on your leg or foot goes untreated with diabetes, this can even mean that you have to have your leg or foot amputated due to that unmanaged infection!!!
What causes diabetes is somewhat of a loaded question, although we can find very simple commonalities. Type 1 diabetes is actually an autoimmune disorder. Autoimmune disorders occur when the immune system is “overwhelmed” and ends up mistakenly attacking your own body’s cells! In type 1 diabetes specifically, your body attacks the pancreas, where insulin is made. Without insulin, the body cannot let your glucose into your cells to make energy, and so it sits in your bloodstream inflaming your system.
In type 2 diabetes, there can be many different variables to what causes this to happen. There are, of course, genetic factors (did your mom or dad have it?), environmental factors (living a stressful life?), and lifestyle factors (too many carbs, not enough healthy fats, etc.) that can contribute to a type 2 diabetes diagnosis.
How to stop, prevent or treat diabetes is one of the biggest questions that this country has to answer. While current literature shows that type 1 diabetes cannot be prevented, type 2 diabetes can OFTEN be prevented or even delayed if you choose to make lifestyle changes that are reasonable, approachable and sustainable to YOU! Did you know that the common mechanism with diabetes and insulin resistance is actually inflammation? (SOURCE) It’s true. So what we do here at Inc is address your diabetes at the root cause: your inflammation. A few things you might expect to talk about with your Dietitian are practices (yes, we use the word “practice”) such as eating more healthIER foods, moving your body regularly, finding balance and non-dependency with alcohol, minimizing (and of course, ideally eliminating) smoking as well as managing your stress. ALL of these factors play a role in your diabetes so when you address them head on, you can often see great results in a reasonable amount of time!
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Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are a collection of complex conditions that not only affect the body in detrimental ways, but also our mental health. A few examples of common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, orthorexia, and avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID). If you have an eating disorder, suspect that you may have an eating disorder, or even have disordered thoughts about eating in general, it is important to build the right medical professional team to help you manage and eventually overcome your disorder. You should know that achieving a full remission from your disordered eating is possible, as long as you are willing to do the work in order to achieve this state.
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Gut Health
Many people think that gut health just involves our stomach, but actually we look at the entire GI tract when it comes to gut health! The GI tract includes the mouth, the esophagus, the stomach, and the small and large intestines). Something that is very interesting about our GI tract is that it houses TRILLIONS of bacteria known as our microbiome. These thousands of species of bacteria play many different roles in our body such as making vitamins, producing serotonin (our happy brain chemical) and even regulating our immune system! (Yes, getting sick also involves our gut and what we eat and drink!) What we eat and drink, and also the thoughts we think and the feelings we FEEL affect the bacteria in our gut. If we are stressed, it can actually kill off bacteria species that are responsible for keeping us well! This is why learning MANY effective ways to manage stress is so important for our overall health. See “Cortisol” for more information on stress and immune system management.
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Healthy Eating
Here at Inc, we would like to define “healthy eating” as a way of eating in which you feel in alignment with yourself. While we know this may seem cheesy, what is also true is that the term “healthy” means a lot of different things to different people! Did you know that stress (from restricting your favorite foods, not seeing weight loss results, not eating enough calories, etc.) can actually cause MORE inflammation than just eating your favorite foods in balance with a healthy diet in the first place!? There are no short cuts to health and so finding alignment with what you know to be good and true for yourself, while finding balance with the fun foods you love CAN have the ability to produce a long, fulfilling and high-quality life!!! A few of the guidelines that we help others with when it comes to healthy eating guidance are eating a variety of foods (and therefore a variety of nutrients), mindful eating (it can literally change your life!), and adequate hydration (water anyone?).
Heart Disease
Heart disease is one of the most common causes of death in the United States. A heart attack happens when blood that is trying to flow to the heart is blocked by a build up of plaque in your arteries. There are a number of variables that can cause this to happen, but the root cause of plaque build up often starts with our arteries becoming scratchy like sand paper instead of smooth like pipes (see Atherosclerosis for more details). Other factors that can lead to heart disease include smoking, high blood pressure (we can help fix that with nutrition !!!) being overweight or obese, a family history of heart disease and aging. Nutritionally speaking, there are certain foods (food products moreso) that may contribute to an increased risk or increased incidence of getting heart disease. Working with one of our nutrition experts may help you slow the progression of your disease and may even help to prevent another heart attack from even happening in the first place!!!
Hexane
Hexane is a chemical that is used as a solvent to draw oil out of a vegetable or seed to make vegetable and seed oils. Once the oil is extracted, the hexane needs to be removed from the oil if the oil is to be sold as “edible”. Hexane is removed from the hexane-oil mixture by adding heat. Unfortunately, if too much heat is introduced to the mixture, pro-cancer chemicals called benzopyrenes can form. There is little regulation as to how much heat can be added to these mixtures so it is best to consume oils that have not been exposed to hexane such as unrefined coconut, avocado and olive oils.
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Integrated Nutrition
What is integrative nutrition you may ask? It is an exciting new field that addresses nutrition from the “whole person” perspective. Integrative nutrition acknowledges that what we eat affects EVERYTHING in our body! It affects our liver (detox), our gut (digestion and absorption), our brain (mental health)… you name it, food affects it! With as important as integrated nutrition is, our Team at Integrated Nutrition Consultants (Inc Nutrition) are intentional with each person that we work with to make sure that what we are doing to help you is looking at the foundation of your health – we don’t believe in band-aids! By integrating mind, body, and food, we help to heal your roots so that the whole body can then cascade into health!
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a digestive disorder that affects the large intestine and can also impact the small intestine, stomach, and even impact your body all the way up to your esophagus. It is an inflammatory condition where poor lifestyle factors, overeating processed foods, unmanaged stress and many other pro-inflammatory factors affect this GI tract. The gut is actually our first (and only) barrier between the outside world and our inner body! Think of the gut as a giant tube. A healthy gut tightly regulates what actually gets let into the body – meaning a healthy gut does more work to keep the bad stuff (like pesticides and food chemicals) out of our bloodstream! However, because the gut holds such an important role, when we do not provide it with enough healing, it is less and less able to keep the “bad stuff” out and this is how systemic (circulating inside the body) inflammation occurs. As a result, IBS symptoms such as a sensitivity to certain foods, abdominal pain, bloating, trapped gas (ever have to lie down on the floor and pass gas to make the pain go away?), and gut microbiome dysbiosis can occur. IBS is a common problem, for many Americans, but at Inc we are EXPERTS at helping people not only address your gut inflammation, but also HEAL your gut so that you can tolerate more foods, see better results with weight loss and even develop a better relationship with food! A few things that we focus on when healing the gut is minimizing gut-inflaming foods, caffeine intake, introducing a high-quality probiotic, and stress management (gentle yoga anyone??).
Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD)
Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD) is more severe than IBS in that it is a group of autoimmune diseases that directly affect the gut. Common IBD diseases include Chron’s disease and Ulcerative colitis. In both of these diseases, our body’s immune system attacks the gut and, if gone unmanaged, can often lead to serious consequences such as a bowel resection (removing part of the intestines from the body) and/or ileostomy procedure (where the intestines stop working entirely and a surgeon has to cut your intestines away from your anal sphincter and suture it to a hole that they make on the outside of your stomach, creating a new opening where you excrete waste into a bag on the side of your body). These outcomes are severe, but not uncommon. They can often be prevented by working with a dietitian and building a sustainable and personalized nutrition plan for you!
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Mindfulness
How often do you just “go through the motions” when it comes to eating? How about in your everyday life!? Mindfulness is the practice (and yes, we DID just say “practice”) of bringing your attention and awareness to THIS present moment. This one. Intentionally. “Why this moment? Why now?” You may ask… Well, it turns out that when we can bring our mind into the present moment (which you can DEFINITELY learn how to do using Yoga) we can make very important observations about our thoughts, behaviors and state of being that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to detect!!! Mindfulness is grounding. It is centering. It allows us to pull back the veil and see ourselves for who and how we truly are in each situation as it comes to us. With this extremely powerful tool, we can then make adjustments accordingly and ACCURATELY to the items that need our attention the most in life!
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Cancer
The amount of research is well established in showing that nutrition plays an essential role in the treatment of cancer. Eating in a healthy way for cancer can also help to manage the symptoms and side effects of cancer treatments including chemotherapy, radiation therapy as well as surgery. A few topics that dietitians at Inc talk about with their patients who have cancer are consuming high amounts of antioxidant-rich foods, fasting for cancer, consuming healthy fats while limiting sugar, hydration, and sometimes considering supplements.
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Omega 3s and Omega Fatty Acids
Did you know that your body actually NEEDS certain fats to survive? This is where our omega 3s and omega 6s come in. We need small amounts of both omega 3s and omega 6s in our diet regularly for our body to function properly. Unfortunately, the American diet contains very little omega 3s and very high amounts of omega 6s. Omega 6s are pro-inflammatory in nature, meaning they can actually cause inflammation. This is especially true when omega 6s are eating in excess. The amount of omega 3s in relation to omega 6s in a diet or usual intake of food is known as the omega 3 to 6 ratio. While research shows that an omega 3 to 6 ratio of 3:4 has been associated with positive health outcomes in humans, the average American’s omega 3 to 6 ratio is about 15:1 omega 6s to omega 3s respectively. Foods that are high in omega 6s include grains, soybean oil and often highly processed food products. Foods that contain significant amounts of omega 3s are scarce, but include salmon and ahi tuna. While foods such as walnuts also contain omega 3s, the amount of omega 3s in foods such as this is SIGNIFICANTLY lower. If you are trying to balance your omega 6s with more omega 3s, the most effective ways to do this is to consume salmon multiple times per week or consider am omega 3 supplement with a significant amount of EPAs and DHAs (the actual omegas, NOT fish oil!) Need more information? Talk with one of our registered dietitians for supplement recommendations for omega 3s!!!
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Personalized Nutrition
Ever wonder why everyone seems to try these cookie cutter “diets” that never seem to work? If so, then personalized nutrition is definitely up your alley! Personalized nutrition is a term that depicts a nutrition plan that has been created to help satisfy the needs, goals, and desires of the person that it is built for. While text book diets such as the keto diet has a strict set of rules that everyone who follows it has to adhere to, a personalized nutrition plan is built with flexibility, likeability, and intentional incorporation of both foods that are healthy for the body (anti-inflammatory foods) and foods that are healthy for the mind (fun foods)!
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Raw Food Diet
A raw food diet is a diet that only allows for foods that have not been processed or cooked. Here at Inc, we’re not too big of fans of “diets” and especially ones that may increase your risk for foodborne illness (raw chicken, really??) So while there is some validity to eating more whole/real/true foods such as fruits and vegetables, what we say is that “there should be 7 billion different ‘diets’ for 7 billion different people!! It is THAT important to customize your nutrition so that you can maintain your nutrition for the rest of your life!! For more information, please see Personalized Nutrition
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Seed Oils
Seed oils are similar to vegetable oils except they come from seeds. Seed oils include canola, safflower, sunflower and grapeseed. Seed oils often undergo the same extraction process as vegetable oils (see “Hexane” for more information on this). There are certain oils, most commonly sunflower oil, that undergoes a process to make it more “strong” and resistant to degrading. This process transforms regular sunflower oil into “high-oleic sunflower oil”, which is more heat resistant and stable than regular sunflower oil.
Sports Nutrition
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Sports nutrition is the field of nutrition and dietetics that implements nutritional strategies with the primary goal of optimizing a person’s performance in their sport or overall physical activity. Sports nutrition applies to a number of populations in addition to athletes including those who work out regularly, those with physically demanding jobs, and even those who are not physically fit but are looking for ways to make physical movement more enjoyable. Some overarching topics in sports nutrition include carb intake, protein dosing, hydration, nutrient timing, supplementation and training low. (see “Training Low”)
Sugar Addiction
This term is actually a term that is more of a slang or media phrase, because according to the American Psychiatric Association, a “sugar addiction” is not a true medical diagnosis. While there is a growing body of research showing that the same neurochemical (brain) pathways that are activated by sugar are the same ones that are also activated by alcohol, drugs, sex and gambling; we can only say as medical professionals that “addictive-like symptoms” to sugar exist. Learning how these addictive-like symptoms are triggered in the body can help us to make decisions before we have food cravings that arise in the first place! A few of the overall (not yet personalized) strategies that we look at are avoiding or modulating processed foods, learning how to read a food label, and finding healthy alternatives such as stevia or monkfruit (no, not the monkfruit that is laced with sugar alcohols…the real stuff)
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Teen Nutrition
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Nutrition for adolescence is important for a number of reasons, including if a child has never been given a good foundation with nutrition in the first place. Schools rarely provide adequate education on nutrition, and unless a teen has a parent who already knows about nutrition, they often grow into adults that know little about what their body needs. Even when a teenager has a parent who knows a lot about nutrition, it does not necessarily mean that the teen will adopt a healthy lifestyle. Allowing your teen to work with a dietitian to personalize their own nutrition as a future adult can empower them to find what works for THEM when it comes to healthy eating! Many times, schools will provide very nutritionally poor food choices, such as pizza or French fries. When a teen is old enough to drive, they often eat out for lunch while in school and frequently consume fast foods. These foods are loaded with hyperpalatable ingredients, making it more difficult for a growing and developing body to get the nutrients that it actually needs to develop optimally. By informing your teen about these truths (by working with a dietitian – sorry Mom, we know they don’t listen to you even thought you’re right!) they can gain the knowledge they need to be successful with their nutrition once they’re an adult!
Training Low
Training low is a term in sports nutrition that describes a temporary intervention in an athletes diet where the individual trains with “low carbohydrate availability”, meaning that they intentionally consume less carbs than they need for exercise with the goal to alter the types of fuel that their body uses for energy. This is especially common in endurance athletes such as ultrarunners. It is very important to note that while training low interventions may alter energy utilization in the body, training low also impairs sports and physical performance in the short term. Additional concerns of training low is increased risk for energy and hormonal dysfunction, especially in women.
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Vegetable Oils
Vegetable oils are the oils that have been extracted (oftentimes with hexane) from vegetables such as corn, soybean, or palm. Certain vegetable oils contain large amounts of omega 6 fatty acids. While it is important to get some omega 6s as our bodies needs a small amount, they just so happen to be pro-inflammatory in large concentrations. See “Omega Fatty Acids” for more information on omega 6s and their relationship to omega 3s. While certain vegetable oils are strong (such as palm oil), other are weak. Think of a grain of corn… in its husk, on a stalk, in a row on a rolling pasture – that oil in that corn is really healthy for us! It has vitamin E, antioxidants and unaltered polyunsaturated (plant-based) fats. However, when we shuck that corn from its cob and squeeze that oil out of its kernel – that oil is very fragile! And so what happens when we expose these fragile oils to heat and light (as we certainly do in the extraction and bottling processes, let alone when we cook with them) is that they degrade and go rancid. When we eat these degraded and rancid oils (most often times without even knowing it) they cause damaging cascades in our body that create a load of additional work for our immune system to go in and repair. This is why it is best to use “strong” oils when cooking with heat. These (non-vegetable oils) include avocado oil and olive oil.
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Weight Loss
How to lose weight is a holy grail kind of question for many. However, at Integrated Nutrition, we believe that weight loss can be easy – believe it or not!!! By creating but an overall energy deficit (not the same thing as a calorie deficit), while the metabolism is working in its ideal state, the body can burn fat at a faster rate than when it is in starvation mode or a “plateau”. We, of course, implement an anti-inflammatory protocol and have the BIG discussion with you about what you can ADD to your life to enhance your nutrition – not what you “have to” take away!!! Eating a healthy diet does not have to mean restriction or dieting!! By staying hydrated, moving your body regularly (we’ve got a personal trainer for ya for that), getting enough sleep (calming herbs anyone?) and learning HOW to manage your stress (we like the idea of gentle yoga) you can achieve weight loss simply by being patient and consistent.