We recently caught up with Satya Dunning, who is currently qualifying as a Nutritional Therapist. We learnt more about her therapist experience including her journey into complementary therapy, her perspectives of nutritional therapy and what you can expect as one of her patients.
1. Can you tell me about your journey into complementary health and why you chose nutritional therapy?
My dedication to complimentary health is a response to my personal healing journey with trauma in order to fathom my own inner light and shadow and catalyse health through nutrition. I chose nutrition because it is a powerful and natural medicinal tool to support the body’s natural immunity and nudge self healing. Supporting people to develop conscious healing diets empower their healthy eating and lifestyle, but also helps them to understand their unconscious relationships with food. It is a holistic process which goes beyond developing a nurturing relationship with one’s body and food but also with one’s mental and emotional health.
2. How would you explain the benefits of nutritional therapy to someone unfamiliar with it?
Nutritional therapy or Healing Diets as I like to call it, is a dietary approach to boost your diet with nutritious and delicious heathy food choices, to build health and vitality. I use food as medicine and natural therapeutic tools to power your body’s immunity and self healing capacity. I work with you to create a nutritional programme to guide your body back to balance taking into account factors such as your lifestyle. I help you understand how you create illness and how you can increase health. I am not not a medical physician and do not practice medicine, nor offer medical diagnosis and treatment of disease.
3. What do you wish more people knew about nutritional therapy? What is the biggest misconception?
I wish people knew that they have so much more power in their hands than they realise; that with a balanced healthy diet, the body will do exactly what it’s meant to and function well; food truly is medicine as Hippocrates said; people are more dehydrated than they realise and dehydration is one of the major cause of disease together with growing acidity in the body caused by eating processed foods, sugar and high amounts of animal products. I have a few misconceptions to propose: that chemicals in the environment, in food are not the cause of cancer; that genes are not the most important factor in determining whether you will have any of the top ten leading causes of death; vitamins, nutrient supplements do not give long term health against protection of disease; drugs and surgery do not cure Western diseases that kill so many people, controlling intake of any one nutrient like carbohydrate, fat, cholesterol will not lead to long term health. But a healthy nutritious and may I add, plant based dietary change will offer health, prevent disease and enable reversal of disease.
4. What advice do you have for individuals interested in exploring complementary health options for their own wellness?
I would say: you’ve come to the right place, you are ready for it. This is not a quick fix. It is a way of life. Be prepared to experience transformation and be challenged. Small steps at a time are really important so you don’t set yourself up for failure and overwhelm.
5. How do you approach appointments with your patients?
I have my terms and conditions ready and clear pricing with description of services included on my website.
I will either receive first contact via email or telephone communication. I will then give my client an intake form, diet and hydration journal, a client waiver and data consent.
The next step after receiving the intake form, diet and hydration journal, client waiver and data consent will be to have one to two consultation meeting and take a full case history and time line of the client’s life. Following the consultation, we will agree on some initial recommendations.
A week later I will email the client their full nutritional programme with information handout and an overview of their programme giving information about health building. They will have a read and make suggestions or not. We will have a call to go through the programme and for me to hear how they got on with the initial recommendations. I will answer any questions and clarify things. Then the client starts their 90 day programme. I will ask the client to fill in a reporting form after 2.5 months. We keep in touch throughout the 90 days: they can email me with questions at any point. Towards the end of the programme, we have one more consultation to see how they go on.
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