An interview with Helen

What was it that lead you to a career in Nutritional Therapy?

It all stemmed from a gradual realization that a lot of the advice which is out there relating to diet doesn’t really serve us well. I also began to seriously question the over dependence on drugs in this country in treating health issues without really looking for the underlying cause. 

Can you give a specific example?

Having had two children within the space of two years I found myself aged 30 feeling very tired and run down! I developed a bad case of adult acne for which my GP prescribed the antibiotic Tetracycline which made some but not much difference to my symptoms. I continued to take the Tetracycline but my general health and wellbeing declined dramatically, I felt like I was on a downward spiral and I was suffering from bouts of depression too.

So how did you resolve this?

I started to read up about natural remedies for clearing my skin and ended up taking a concoction of nutritional supplements including fish oils, zinc, vitamin B6, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin A and probiotics which all made a huge difference to my skin as well and my overall health and wellbeing. On hind sight I clearly must have been very deficient in these nutrients.

What do you think led to these deficiencies?

Having two children in a short space of time can leave anyone very nutrient deficient but in my case it was not helped by years and years of trying to manage my weight through a low fat diet. Convention has had it that cutting out fat is the best way to lose weight and supermarkets are piled high with artificially manufactured, ‘low fat,’ products to this end. Low fat diets have not served us well! As a nation we have generally become fatter as a result as well as deprived of the fat soluble vitamins A,D,E &K all of which are important to our immunity, our bones our mental health and our skin.

Do you still take the supplements?

Since that time I have concentrated more on improving my diet to meet these nutritional shortfalls. I don’t think that supplements are a replacement for a healthy diet but they can be an effective addition to a nutritional protocol to tackle a health problem.          

What ultimately did you learn from this experience?

It was one of the things which eventually lead me towards taking a degree in Nutritional Therapy and learning so much more about how diet can affect our health and wellbeing.As a Nutritional Therapist we look for the root causes of people’s health problems. If you can find the underlying cause of symptoms and treat the source it is a far more effective and safer way of looking after our health than using drugs, and diet often has a large part to play here. Drugs tend to treat symptoms but not the cause and they often come with nasty side effects which are then treated with more drugs. It can becomes a viscous circle which is difficult to break free from and an ever downward spiral from a health point of view.