Nutritional Counseling

Nutritional Counseling

Good nutrition is the basic building block of our health. Adopting a healthy food plan is often the first step towards correcting health problems. Dr. Vander Wielen uses the principles of clinical nutrition to individualize food plans and recommend nutritional supplements for his patients as a part of a lifestyle medicine plan.

Clinical Nutrition

Clinical nutrition refers to both the practice of using food to maintain health and the therapeutic use of food to treat illness. Many people today want a magic bullet for health, but nothing can replace smart nutrition. Additionally, using the nutritional supplements that are right for you will help optimize your health now and in the future. The right supplements can be an important part of an overall program designed to address specific health problems or concerns you may have. Remember, nutritional support, whether it be foundational, targeted, or a combination of both, is most effective when combined with a healthy food plan, regular exercise, and positive lifestyle choices.

Lifestyle Medicine

We are pleased to offer our patients the most researched lifestyle medicine program available called FirstLine Therapy . This is the only physician-monitored lifestyle medicine program that has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals and we continue to see extraordinary results in our patients.

-Scott Vander Wielen, DC

Lifestyle is a large factor in health. Research estimates that 70 to 90% of the risk of chronic disease is attributable to lifestyle. That means what you eat, how you exercise, what your spiritual practices are, how much stress you live with (and how you handle it) are all elements that must be addressed in a comprehensive approach. Lifestyle medicine is the comprehensive approach that addresses these areas. As a patient, you may be asked to make dietary and lifestyle activity changes that, when combined with nutrients targeted to specific functional needs, will allow you to really be in charge of improving your own health and changing the outcome of disease manifestation.

According to the Center for Disease Control, 78% of all Americans suffer from at least one chronic disease. For those suffering, the only true help comes from lifestyle medicine. Using nutrition, supplementation, exercise and individualized food plans, chronic disease can actually be reversed according to the research. All other treatments for chronic disease can be overpowered by poor lifestyle habits. The following organizations recommend lifestyle medicine to address the underlying causes of chronic disease:

  • American Cancer Society
  • American Heart Association
  • Arthritis Foundation
  • American Diabetes Association
  • Center for Disease Control
  • National Institutes of Health
  • North American Menopause Society

FirstLine Therapy

Reversing Chronic Illness With Lifestyle Medicine

A therapeutic lifestyle means living your life in a way that improves your health. It means making choices every day that will enhance your health, enabling you to achieve a full, healthy life. Isn’t that what everybody wants? Good health, full function, and absence of disease well into old age. If that’s what you want, the FirstLine Therapy program can help.

A therapeutic lifestyle is possible for everyone, but to achieve it you need to know which choices are good for you and which ones are not. There is a lot of misinformation about what is healthy and what is unhealthy, and even the advice from professionals often seems to change from day to day. The FirstLine Therapy program is individualized and based on your unique health picture. Dr. Vander Wielen will provide you with the education, motivation and encouragement you need to make healthy lifestyle choices each day going forward.

Helping patients adopt a therapeutic lifestyle is the first and possibly the most important therapy doctors can use to treat many chronic health problems. Consider a few facts:

• 91 % of type 2 diabetes cases could be prevented by the adoption of healthy habits and lifestyle choices.

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommends lifestyle changes as the most important and cost-effective way to lower cholesterol.

• Lifestyle changes are now recommended as the “first line therapy” for the major chronic diseases in our society:

  • Heart Disease
  • Stroke
  • Diabetes
  • Arthritis
  • Osteoporosis
  • Alzheimer’s disease
  • Fibromyalgia

• Lifestyle choices are also the key to many symptoms that are not classified as diseases:

  • Fatigue
  • Hormone imbalance
  • Stress-related symptoms
  • And many others

Yes, many of these health problems can be prevented or even treated by adopting a healthy lifestyle, but the FirstLine Therapy program is not just about preventing disease; it’s also about living life to the fullest. It’s about feeling good every day; waking up and wanting to get going in the morning; having the energy to do the things you want to do, all day long; living without pain; performing at your best; and aging gracefully and healthfully. It is designed to help you achieve better health now, and maintain good health for a lifetime.

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Did You Know?

Did you know a lengthy report in 1990 to the Congress of the United States by the Office of Technological Assessment detailed numerous neurotoxic dangers associated with chemicals which adversely affect the nervous system. The specific chemicals (in order) are 1) industrial chemicals; 2) pesticides; 3) therapeutic drugs; 4) recreational drugs; 5) food; 6) food additives; and 7) cosmetic ingredients and naturally occurring substances. The report further chronicled that more than 65,000 chemicals are in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inventory of toxic chemicals, with approximately 1,500 notices of intent to manufacture received annually. Few of these toxic chemicals have been tested to determine how they adversely affect the nervous system, which in turn controls every major body system including the muscle and autoimmune systems. 

Source: Malnutrition in the Elderly A National Crisis. Document for sale by Us. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C 20402, Stock No. 017-062-00147-2)