The Benefits of Integrative Nutrition: How to Maximize Your Health Through Food

While Hippocrates coined the famous axiom, Let food be thy medicine, the emerging world of integrative medicine developed the concept of functional nutrition, which takes an individual and holistic approach to your dietary preferences. 

It should come as no surprise that nutrition can influence nearly every aspect of your health, from your mitochondria, energy levels, hormones, immune system, gene expression, gut microbiome, and even your mental well-being. 

Our diets comprise diverse nutrients, vitamins, enzymes, and plant compounds that provide the building blocks that drive various metabolic processes in every cell of the body (1,2). Understanding how to select the proper nutrition for your specific lifestyle, life stage, and biospecific needs can be helpful when looking to optimize your overall health.

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What is Integrative Medicine

Integrative medicine combines allopathic and complementary therapies for a personalized root-cause approach to treatment, focusing on all aspects of an individual's health, including their emotional, physical, mental, and cellular health. 

What is Integrative Nutrition

Integrative nutrition views food and diet as much more than just calories. It understands that nutrition is the foundation for all aspects of our health. 

Integrative nutrition takes a personalized approach to nutritional therapies. It tailors specific dietary needs to the individual based on their current physical, mental, and emotional health, as well as their short and long-term goals and health issues. 

It looks at internal and external factors that may influence digestive, neurological, cellular, and immune health throughout the body while creating some nutritional guardrails around dietary preferences that are ideal for the individual. 

What is the Role of Nutrition in Integrative Medicine

Nutrition is the cornerstone of optimal health. What we consume is critical to developing our immune system, longevity capabilities, mental state, and physical well-being. It can be a form of preventive medicine all unto itself. 

Nutritional deficiencies and imbalances can have a significant effect on brain function, systemic inflammation, cardiovascular health, and microbial diversity, as well as our hormones, blood sugar balance, disease management, cellular homeostasis, and energy levels. (4, 5).

Common Diets Used in Integrative Medicine

There are many diets to choose from in the current health curriculum we are all enrolled in, which can make selecting the "right" diet feel like a daunting task. 

Below are some of the more common diets used in integrative medicine that might be a good fit for your individual needs

Elimination Diet

Elimination diets are a great jumping-off point to see what foods don't bode well with your body and health. An elimination diet focuses on eliminating problematic and irritating foods. When doing this diet, you stop eating one or several problematic foods for a few weeks. During this time, you will keep a journal and write down how eating these foods makes you feel. This diet aims to address underlying sensitivities, pro-inflammatory foods, and nutrients or foods that can irritate your gut and immune system. You will slowly reintroduce these problematic foods into your diet and track how those make you feel.

Low Inflammatory Diet

The low-inflammatory diet looks to reduce or avoid factors that can influence inflammation throughout the body. This means identifying triggers that can lead to an inflammatory response in the body. Looking at food sensitivities and allergens can be a useful starting point. Some core principles are avoiding refined sugars, processed vegetable oils, and common food allergens such as corn, soy, dairy, wheat, and gluten. Minimizing processed and fried foods and meats, sugary beverages, and alcohol, focusing on whole foods, and trying out diets such as the Mediterranean, DASH, or a modified Paleo diet can be helpful.

Phytonutrients Spectrum Meal Plan

The Phytonutrient Spectrum Meal Plan focuses on incorporating more phytonutrient-rich food options into the diet. Phytonutrients are components of plants, fruits, veggies, grains, herbs, spices, nuts, and even teas that can have a beneficial effect on promoting overall health. Researchers have identified about 10,000 phytochemicals or bioactive compounds in fruits, grains, vegetables, and tea. While some polyphenols are more popular than others (like the quercetin in apples, resveratrol in grapes or ECGG, and catechins in green tea), many other foods can be added to the Phytonutrient Spectrum Meal Plan, such as berries, pomegranates, soybeans, olives, grapes, apples, cocoa, onion, garlic, leeks & olives and tomatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, and various fruits and vegetables that are brightly colored (think red and orange). Don't forget about cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, and kale (11).

Cardiometabolic Food Plan

A cardiometabolic food plan is a dietary approach created for individuals at risk of or already diagnosed with cardiovascular disease or metabolic conditions. This plan looks at underlying causes and contributing factors to these metabolic conditions, such as inflammation, insulin resistance, and stress. It takes a modified Mediterranean diet approach, focusing on the heart-healthy element, such as low glycemic, personalized, targeted calories, blood sugar balance, high fiber, low sugar, and balanced quality fats (8).

Detox Food Plan

A detox food plan can be both a short-term and long-term dietary approach designed toward eliminating toxins from the body. This can include integrating fasting, enemas, colon cleanses, fruit, juice, water, and herbal dietary interventions. This protocol aims to provide nutritional support for helping the detoxification pathways process and excrete toxins. The Detox Food Plan reduces exposure to trigger foods, including allergens, sensitivities, and intolerances. 

It supports liver function and emphasizes taking measures to reduce the intake of toxins of all kinds by encouraging the intake of organically grown foods, organic grass-fed meats, and wild-caught fish while reducing exposure to processed oils and canned or plastic-containing foods and liquids. Limiting ingestion of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and heavy metals, reducing the toxic burden, and buying organic are all key principles of the Detox Food Plan. 

Mito Food Plan

You can think of this as the mitochondria food plan, hence the name Mito Food plan, with the goal of protecting the mitochondria. The Mito Food plan can be described as an anti-inflammatory, low-glycemic, gluten-free, low-grain, high-quality fats approach to eating. This way of eating focuses on supporting the mitochondria by using therapeutic foods that improve energy production. This diet looks to integrative protective antioxidants, phytonutrient-rich fruits and veggies, and high-quality facts (such as EPA and DHA, and MCTs) that impact the quality of the inner membrane of the mitochondria. This plan also includes macronutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates), B vitamins, coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), and anti-inflammatory nutrients in the diet, such as cruciferous vegetables and polyphenols. Reducing overall carbohydrates and maintaining a lower and consistent insulin level through low glycemic foods is key to the mitochondrial diet (6).

Functional Medicine Labs to Test for Integrative Nutrition Medicine 

Practitioners can use labs to individualize nutrition treatment options by looking at organic acids, micronutrient profiles, and comprehensive stool tests to optimize our biochemical individual and identify gaps in the diet that can be supported through dietary and supplemental interventions. 

Metabolic processes in the body produce organic acids from the digestion of protein, carbohydrates, and fat, and these acids are what generate cellular energy. The Organic Acids Test can provide a comprehensive metabolic analysis of a patient's overall health, including their intestinal yeast and bacteria, vitamin and mineral levels, oxidative stress, and oxalates. This test helps to look at overall nutrient status. 

The micronutrient panel provides a comprehensive extracellular and intracellular assessment of the levels of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fatty acids, and amino acids. This test can help you understand your nutritional requirements at a foundational and cellular level.

The GI-Map test measures a variety of gastrointestinal microbiota and microbial imbalances that may be contributing to illness and indicators of digestion, absorption, inflammation, and immune function.

Summary

Our diets are made up of diverse nutrients, vitamins, enzymes, and plant compounds that provide the building blocks which drive various metabolic processes in every cell of the body. Integrative nutrition takes a personalized approach to nutritional therapies and aims to create a nutritional plan that optimizes digestive, neurological, cellular, and immune health. There are many diets to choose from through the integrative medicine lens. Practitioners can use labs to individualize nutrition treatment options by looking at various tests to optimize our biochemical individual. Understanding how to select the proper nutrition for your specific lifestyle, life stage, and biospecific needs can be helpful when looking to optimize your overall health.