A holistic approach takes into account more than just food, it’s about you and your experience. Holistic nutrition can help overcome an autoimmune disease by discovering the individual’s unique nutrient needs. From here, they can help their clients rebuild a healthy relationship with food. As a Holistic Nutritionist and lifestyle coach, I utilize food as medicine as a tool to achieve sustainable, whole-body wellness.
Sometimes this requires only a few simple tweaks to someone’s diet, lifestyle and routine. Other times it requires a much bigger intervention to establish baseline health. In most cases that involve chronic (persistent) symptoms or illness, I use customized elimination protocols. They help remove foods and lifestyle factors that cause gut disruption, immune intolerance, allergies, and inflammation.
A holistic nutritionist also supports clients by personalized protocols involving nourishing meal plans, targeted supplementation, and lifestyle changes.
I’m a certified holistic nutritionist in Ontario Canada and work with clients worldwide remotely. I help people with autoimmune conditions and chronic digestive issues who are required to follow restrictive diets. And I also help those who don’t know where to start to change after their diagnosis.
Mina was introduced to me back in the winter of 2019. She was a busy 42-year-old mom of two and had been diagnosed with under-active thyroid and Hashimoto’s disease. This happened after a very stressful incident, 6 months prior to when she decided to work with a holistic nutritionist.
Clearly, her lifestyle and stress levels were not supporting her health condition. She was seeking help because she wanted to take a different approach to her healing besides the conventional thyroid medications. Her under-active thyroid symptoms included inexplicable weight gain, hair loss, fatigue, and rosacea. The symptoms didn’t tend to resolve with thyroid medications, despite the fact that her TSH levels had lowered down to 3.1 from the original 5.
After a one-hour intake session with Mina, I was able to understand her main concerns. With this information, I started working on the root causes of her condition. A thorough GI-Map and dried urine Dutch Test helped us identify the underlying issues. Since Mina had a history of indigestion symptoms and hormonal imbalances, I decided to start by healing her leaky gut. I knew an autoimmune paleo nutrition plan was the place to start to manage the symptoms associated with her complaints.
During the first 3 months of working with Mina, I made sure to understand all of the details around her current and historical mental and emotional health. We explored the major triggers in her diet such as: dairy, gluten and grains, alcohol, caffeine, and nightshades. We replaced them with nutrient-rich foods such as vegetables, herbs, essential fatty acids and quality animal protein.
With regards to her hormonal issues, I primarily made sure to support her adrenals with adaptogenic herbal formulas and a few homeopathic medicines.
After about 5 months of changing her diet and adding simple supportive modalities, Mina was feeling more energized, having regular bowel movements, wasn’t relying on coffee to keep her going through the day and her rosacea flare-ups had been less frequent.
My other recommendations and protocols included:
Mina continues to follow a clean, wholesome diet and she has been able to reintroduce some of the foods she had initially eliminated from her diet.
My efforts to support her with building healthful habits step-by-step, such as grocery shopping tips, food preparation methods, and detoxifying her system by switching to cleaner skincare products, all paid off. Soon Mina was able to notice the huge role those small changes were playing in her overall well-being. I did not change anything too suddenly, took into consideration her everyday choices, and made a practical meal plan that had alternatives to her favorite foods that were healthier and autoimmune friendly.
Healing from an autoimmune condition often seems impossible. Furthermore, some are convinced they need to be on medication for the rest of their lives. But with the right holistic approach and determination, it is possible to achieve impressive results and improve symptoms.
It is incredibly important to find out definitively what each individual’s unique intolerances are. Decreasing aggravating factors in nutrition can be key to achieving remission in autoimmune disorders (alongside appropriate medications and treatments).
Mona Rasi
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