How Do You Trust Nutri­tional Advice?

The world is full of com­pa­nies and pro­fes­sion­als offer­ing and sell­ing online nutri­tional advice. How do you know who to trust? Two out of three Amer­i­cans are over­weight or obese, and yet, the prob­lem only seems to be get­ting worse. The same food can be touted for its ben­e­fits by one per­son, yet vil­i­fied by another. Let’s look at why this happens.

1. “Eat in Mod­er­a­tion” — I cringe when I hear this phrase. It’s a catch-all phrase that too many nutri­tion­ists use. Candy can be okay, in mod­er­a­tion. Alco­hol binges can be okay, in mod­er­a­tion. Eat your veg­gies and have your cake too…in mod­er­a­tion.
   
   “Eat in Mod­er­a­tion” really tells you noth­ing about nutri­tion. It’s say­ing any­thing can be good or bad if you eat too much or too lit­tle and allows peo­ple to ratio­nal­ize poor choices. One study can show soy is good…another study can show soy is bad. The truth? Soy is good for cer­tain sub­pop­u­la­tions, and poor for other sub­pop­u­la­tions. You want a nutri­tion­ist who knows that food and herbs can be incred­i­bly dynamic in this man­ner — and direct a plan spe­cific to you!Eating a candy bar is in no way good for your health (even in moderation)…Exceptions? 1. You just fin­ished run­ning a highly intense race and you need a quick source of carbs to replen­ish your glyco­gen. 2. You’re dia­betic and are try­ing to stave off a hypo­glycemic attack.
2. Cor­po­rate Hands in the Cookie Jar — There are many com­pet­ing inter­ests when it comes to nutri­tion. The Amer­i­can Dietetic Asso­ci­a­tion receives spon­sor­ship from Pepsi, Kellogg’s, and even Her­shey for their con­fer­ences and events.Most research is funded by com­pa­nies with con­flicts of inter­ests. Neg­a­tive stud­ies? Sim­ply gone unpub­lished. As always there are two sides of the same coin, Kellogg’s will pro­duce Cocoa Peb­bles, but they are also the cor­po­rate entity behind the health­ier Kashi line of prod­ucts.
   
   Exam­ple: Study­ing trans fat oil ver­sus any other oil, will make that other oil look good for just about any health mea­sure. So a com­pany can place their oil against trans fat, show sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant health ben­e­fits, and then com­mer­cially tout that their oil is clin­i­cally proven to be bet­ter than other oils.Read the author’s descrip­tion or sim­ply per­form a quick Google search on the author’s name and “dis­clo­sures” and see what affil­i­a­tions they have. More often than not, when I read a study sim­i­lar to the one I just described, the main author sits on an advi­sory board for an orga­ni­za­tion with incen­tives to pro­mote the spe­cific food prod­uct studied.
3. “Good” Advice is Cir­cum­stan­tial — A per­son eat­ing fast food five days a week will be health­ier if they eat fast food only three days a week. A nutri­tion­ist giv­ing a patient a goal of eat­ing fast food only three days a week would be good advice. It is not opti­mal advice, how­ever, and nutri­tion­ists can be judged accordingly.The patient may not be ready for a full raw food diet with diverse sources of lean pro­tein through­out the day. My com­pro­mise is that I always lead with what is opti­mum, and then fil­ter through what is “2nd-best” for the patient.Part of my job as a nutri­tion­ist is to sense how ready a per­son is to change and focus my time accord­ingly. For some, I focus on just out­lin­ing or refram­ing their goals in the first place. Some­times I have to win small vic­to­ries to build momen­tum for larger problems.My “fail­ures” are those cases in which a patient was will­ing to any and every­thing except the very activ­ity, sup­ple­ment, or change that I thought would help them.Nutritionists have to remem­ber that there are indi­vid­u­als who have never boiled a pot of water in their life, let alone have they thought on how to pre­pare a dish of veg­eta­bles that taste good to their palate.

   I have worked in soup kitchens where the still reject can­died car­rots, sim­ply because its car­rots — and they asso­ciate car­rots with “bland” and “yucky”.

4. Nutri­tion Takes Time: We live in a med­ical­ized cul­ture where we expect to take a drug and expe­ri­ence symp­tom relief within min­utes or hours. Nutri­tion  approaches can take three months for clin­i­cal ben­e­fit to surface.This is because many cells, such as car­ti­lage or red blood cells, will take three months to replace them­selves in your body.Complex hor­monal and phys­i­o­log­i­cal shifts can some­times even take 6 months.Even food sen­si­tiv­i­ties can the­o­ret­i­cally be elim­i­nated if the per­son stays com­pletely away from the offend­ing food for 6–9 months to allow the “mem­ory” immune cells to die off. This is dif­fi­cult when labels are hard to deci­pher, con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is com­mon, and “eat­ing out” is the norm.Habits also take time. I have read that habits can take any­where from three to eight weeks to become part of your daily rou­tine. Over time, these new habits can and will wear off, which is why I rec­om­mend one to two 21-day “detox­i­fi­ca­tion”  peri­ods where you keep your­self account­able for only eat­ing the opti­mal foods to sup­port health and healing.Evidence-based sup­ple­ments to sup­port your nat­ural detox­i­fi­ca­tion mech­a­nisms are rec­om­mended, but I leave them as optional sup­ports. As a chi­ro­prac­tor, I trust the body’s abil­ity to heal first.Affirmations and/or jour­nal writ­ing can be help­ful with com­pli­ance. Sup­port groups and sup­port from friends and fam­ily close to you is also incred­i­bly impor­tant. If the stress of a rela­tion­ship is con­tribut­ing to you eat­ing poorly. I can give the best nutri­tional advice in the world, but, for you to make sig­nif­i­cant change, some­times the rela­tion­ship is what needs addressed!
5. Right Nutri­tion, Wrong Form or Dosage — Numer­ous fac­tors such as age, sex, med­ica­tion usage, health his­tory, and fam­ily his­tory can play a role as to what form and dosage of a spe­cific herb or vit­a­min are used.Calcium car­bon­ate is not the most bioavail­able form of cal­cium, but is the cheap­est. It is nec­es­sary some­times for indi­vid­u­als with a cit­ric acid allergy (unable to take cal­cium cit­rate), but the dosage cho­sen needs to be altered accordingly.Magnesium is often rec­om­mended at 400mg, but some peo­ple have mul­ti­ple fac­tors play­ing into their mag­ne­sium defi­ciency and need a short-term dose of 1200mg to jump­start their recov­ery. Mag­ne­sium oxide is poorly absorbed, and cit­rate or glu­conate are much bet­ter. Mag­ne­sium cit­rate can have added ben­e­fit (or dis­ad­van­tage) of improv­ing bowel movements.Unfortunately, many nutri­tion­ists, do not have the depth of edu­ca­tion to appre­ci­ate such a holis­tic and com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of their patients. Cer­ti­fied Clin­i­cal Nutri­tion­ists are exist­ing health pro­fes­sion­als (MD’s, DO’s, DC’s) with advanced train­ing in this type of nutrition.