As a Nutritional Therapist, ‘healthy eating’ is a subject that is extremely close to my heart, through my own experience, I cannot stress enough how important eating healthy foods is.

Many think it’s all about ‘diet’ personally I don’t like that word as it comes with the idea of deprivation and limiting what you eat, whereas Nutritional Therapy is all about giving your body everything it needs to thrive.

Because we live in a fast paced, demanding and often stressful world – there are many of us who regularly find ourselves stuck in a permanently stressed state or the ‘flight or fight’ mode. Whilst this is useful when escaping a sabre-toothed tiger, it isn’t necessarily helpful when we are trying to digest a plateful of food.

When we are stressed our heart rate increases, blood pressure spikes, more adrenalin is produced and the body moves blood away from the digestive tract and into muscles as digesting food isn’t a priority. Constant levels of stress open you up to potential diseases; because the immune system suffers due to a lack of nutrients, as the body isn’t able to digest food properly.

Therefore, by making some simple changes to your lifestyle, you will be able to support your bodies digestive system, enabling nutrients to be adsorbed properly, and ensure your immune system is working to its best ability, leaving you with a healthier and better version of yourself.

Here are my 9 top tips to help you make those simple changes:

1. Find some time for you, a hobby, meditate, sport, something you like and enjoy doing.
2. Exercise it can improve your mood, help with weight loss, is good for your muscles and bones, increases energy levels, reduces risk of chronic disease, improves skin health, brain health and memory.
3. Get outside daily, it regulates your melatonin levels enabling a better night’s sleep and increases Vitamin D, made in the skin when exposed to the sun.
4. Sleep, most require 7-8 hours, this is when our bodies regenerate and heal.
5. Eat from 5 portions of vegetables and two portions of fruit a day, pack even more in with a green smoothie.
6. Eat the rainbow, full of antioxidants.
7. Eat whole unprocessed foods as often as possible, if you can cook from scratch
8. Swap the white/processed carbohydrates and replace with complex carbohydrates such as brown/whole wheat, brown rice, sweet potatoes, squashes, quinoa, buckwheat
9. Drink 2 litres of water a day

If you want to find out more about how your lifestyle could be affecting your health, or to get advise on some simple nutritional changes you could make, please contact Rebecca Hancock at the Bury Natural Health Centre on 01284 760020.

This week its Dementia Action Week, so we wanted to take it upon ourselves to raise awareness and talk about what Dementia is. Dementia is an umbrella term that Alzheimer’s disease can fall under; and encompasses a set of symptoms that may include memory loss, difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language difficulties.

Changes are often small to start with, however may be severe enough to affect daily life. Early signs can include not recognising everyday objects or their use (e.g. looking at a washing machine but not understanding what it is for), disorientation to place (being unable to find your way out of a shop or public place) and confused thinking. A person with dementia may also experience changes in their mood or behaviour.

Diet has always played a pivotal role in our general health and wellbeing, and therefore it was intriguing to read about an 82-year-old lady who was diagnosed and hospitalised with Alzheimers, who claims to have got her memory back after changing her diet to one which consisted of high amounts of blueberries and walnuts; broccoli, kale, spinach, green tea, oats, sweet potatoes and even dark chocolate with a high percentage of cacoa. According to an article written in the Collective Evolution this combination of foods have been known to be beneficial for brain health. Whilst her memory did not return overnight, slowly memories started to come back, and she began to seem like her old self again.

The Alzheimers Society claims, ‘The best way to reduce your risk of dementia is to adapt various aspects of your lifestyle, including eating certain foods, taking regular exercise, not smoking, and maintaining normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels.’

It is therefore imperative that we support our bodies to be the healthiest they can be, potentially reducing the likeliness of developing dementia and other diseases now and in the future.  A number of Studies (by the Alzheimers Society and National Health Service) discuss a therapeutic approach including dietary optimisation, low GL, low inflammatory, low grain foods, fasting for 12 hours (intermittent fasting), stress reduction techniques such as yoga or meditation, optimising sleep by increasing melatonin levels, exercising 4 to 6 times a week, keeping your mind active, optimising gut health, either increasing dietary sources or potential supplementation of curcumin or ashwagandha; Omega 3 fatty acids (DHA & EPA), B12, D3 & K2, zinc (The role of zinc in Alzheimers disease), a diet high in antioxidants may be beneficial.

At the Bury Natural Health Centre, our resident Nutritional Therapist Rebecca Hancock trained in the principles of Functional and Evidence-Based Medicine at the renowned College of Naturopathic Medicine in London. This encompassed a science-based method that assesses and supports the underlying causes of symptoms. If you would like to find out more about the Nutritional Therapy treatment, click here, and you can contact us to book in for your free 20 minute consultation.

In our blog post today we are continuing with our theme of ‘stress’ and how this affects our mental health in support of Mental Health Week. Everybody experiences stress at certain times, and it can be the result of negative and positive events; a distressing event or a challenge.  Understanding how to manage your stress response so that it does not dominate your life is very important, and something our Therapist Sally Quill works through with her patients within their sessions.

Stress could be something you have no control over, for example a redundancy; other stress is caused by a decision you have made, such as deciding to change careers, or run a marathon. Some stresses are part of your environment which are hard to control; for example, finding a colleague’s behaviour stressful is difficult to experience and may feel beyond your power to influence.

Whilst social media has had a major impact on how we interact with friends, family and businesses, too much social media usage can result in high levels of stress, anxiety and other negative emotions. According to PsychCentral, one of the main contributors to our stress when using social media, is the tendency to compare ourselves to others (often celebrities more than friends). Whilst it is commonly known that people show the best elements of their lives on social media – we still have a tendency to compare ourselves to the sometimes-unrealistic posts we see, and inevitably end up with low self-esteem as we strive for the ‘perfect life’ which we view online.

It is therefore essential that we learn what situations or scenarios cause us to feel elements of stress, anxiety or low self-esteem, and we learn how we can anticipate these feelings and then develop strategies for how we can respond.

During the Therapy sessions with Sally Quill, she will work with you to understand the scenarios which are your personal ‘stress triggers’ and then through working together you will develop a method for how to manage these feelings and the stress which it causes you.

By choosing how you respond to situations you are empowering your mind and you are able to move forward and respond in a healthy way, feeling in control. Click here for further information on the Therapy sessions which Sally offers.

Most people do maintain items within their home, or their car; but their mental health is often forgotten until something happens. They then go on to feel overwhelmed and their mind becomes so full up that it spills over into anxiety, depression, panic attacks etc.

Mental Health Awareness Week are focussing on ‘stress’ in their 2018 campaign which runs from the 14^th to the 20^th May. Research has shown that two thirds of us will at some point experience a mental health problem in our lifetime – and stress has been shown to be a big factor in this.

With our lives constantly getting busier and people taking on more responsibilities in their work lives and combining that with the demands of family life – it is no wonder that when something unexpected happens, we are tipped over the edge into a stressed state.

What is stress?

Stress is primarily a physical response. When we are stressed the body thinks it’s under attack and switches to ‘fight or flight’ mode (also called hyperarousal, or the acute stress response); and releases a combination of hormones and chemicals such as adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine to prepare the body for physical action.

Whilst stress itself isn’t a mental health problem, it can lead to anxiety or depression if left untreated.

Karen Bromley, a practitioner at the Bury Natural Health Centre offering Hypnotherapy and Trauma and Abuse Therapy to patients has first-hand understanding of how stress can play a large role in mental health.

“Juggling a busy social work career and an unhappy marriage I ended up shutting down and struggled with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for 11 years. My healing process started by seeing a Hypnotherapist / Wellness Coach and with just 6 sessions I started to transform my life on all levels, especially by emptying my mind and body of unexpressed emotions, loss, guilt, anger etc. Amazingly my physical and mental pain started to fade as I let go of so much I had not expressed in the past, including my two miscarriages. Then I changed my beliefs about myself and my world.”

After Karen was able to change her thought process from thinking she ‘wasn’t good enough’ to now thinking she is ‘able to achieve anything she wants’ and she believes in herself; she was inspired to retrain as a Hypnotherapist and Wellness Coach. This was back in 2014, and she now sees a variety of clients who also want to change the way they live their life, and she is helping them to become more content and free from stress.

Our subconscious makes up 95 to 98 % of our mind and it contains files of all our memories and beliefs. If you want to make quick, long lasting powerful changes it is recommended that you do this working with your subconscious mind through hypnotherapy.

For further information please click here, or contact the Centre on 01284 760020.

The team at the Bury Natural Health Centre has been working really hard behind the scenes to bring you a fresh, modern website which is easy to navigate, and we are really pleased to announce it has now gone live!

We will be using this blog section of our website to update you with any news the Centre has, special offers, and articles related to the treatments we offer.

Click here to view the treatments we offer.

Click here to contact us if you have any questions regarding the treatments, or wish to book an appointment.