Nutritional Therapy Explained

I’ve always been interested in nutrition. With a background in community health and wellness, nutrition has always fascinated me. My first job out of undergrad was with The Pittsburgh Health Corps of AmeriCorps, a domestic like Peace Corps. My position was to help with outreach of the county WIC program. Here I learned about how this program came to help children with anemia and to enhance their nutrition. After my year of service, I went on to complete a Master’s Degree in Health Education at Penn State Harrisburg while working for a local insurance company providing worksite wellness programs.

Fast forward many years and health issues later, I found that the Paleo diet helped my low blood sugar crashes. In 2015, we adopted our son which led us down a road of infant nutrition through formula. He had many issues digesting commercial formulas and had colic.

We researched and talked with many health providers about how to help him best. One provider helped me to understand how his stomach acid was not acidic enough and the commercial formulas where irritating his digestive tract. My husband and I agreed to try making his formula from the recipe in Nourishing Traditions from a mixture of bone broth, organic cows liver, various fats, probiotics, and digestive enzymes. His colic was not healed overnight, but his eczema cleared up in 2 weeks. He did sleep more than 4 hours in a row after a few weeks and continued to improve over time. When he could eat solid foods, we only gave him fruits, vegetables, meats and broth. Luckily, he loved them all.

As a busy mom, I started to research family friendly recipes without eggs, dairy or grains. I feel into the Autoimmune Paleo protocol and was gifted some cookbooks. These cookbooks were written my Nutritional Therapy Practitioners or NTPs. Since I’m a crazy researcher, I looked up NTP. The Nutritional Therapy Association trains NTPs and offers monthly free conference calls about their program. After I attended a conference call, I was hooked. This was a holistic nutrition program that I had been looking for years. The online coursework was convenient and fit into my busy family life and there were only 3 onsite weekends to attend.

So, here I am, incredibly passionate about how real food heals. The digestive system is incredibly important to the overall health of our bodies. Today our son is a healthy 2 year old, full of energy and love. He constantly gets compliments on how healthy he looks and how vibrant his eyes are. Our family has benefited greatly by a whole foods diet and digestive wellness.