I have always had a passion for food. Dinners out at exciting new restaurants, trying local cuisine when travelling, home cooked chili and cornbread, chocolate…you get the picture. However, over the past several years I have developed a passion for not only food, but healthy nutritious food that tastes great too!
Nutrition is the building blocks to a healthy body, and a key component to Naturopathic Medicine. We need a complex array of nutrients - vitamins, minerals, amino acids, complex carbohydrates, fats etc – for our cells to function optimally. There are numerous reactions that occur within our body every second to detox, digest, contract, send signals, and without the necessary nutrients, we cannot provide the energy to do these things.
We tend to bombard our bodies with simple sugars, carbs and caffeine that are easy to grab on the go and give us a jolt of energy, however most of them are void of any nutritional value that our digestive system can breakdown slowly and use later on for fuel.
Instead, we should be enjoying our colourful nutritious meals in a stress-free environment, taking time to properly digest. I stress colourful, as the more colours we eat, the more variety of nutrients we eat. I mention a stress-free environment, as we want to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for “rest & digest,” as oppose to the sympathetic nervous system, “fight or flight,” which we all know too well.
In the spirit of nutrition month, I want to inspire you to take small steps towards implementing more healthy choices in your diet, with Food Fridays! Look out for tips or recipes to introduce to you the healthy nutritious food that I am passionate about, and hopefully you can become passionate too.
Yours in health,
Dr. Karen