As a person, I have been interested in dietetics for almost 20 years. All started when my wife suffered a very nasty and painful bout of shingles, and flatly refused the extensive and powerful medical prescription on offer in favour of some significant dietary and lifestyle changes. Within three weeks, all traces of the infection and its manifestations had disappeared. I decided that prevention was better than cure, and followed suit. We have never looked back.
As holistic osteopaths, it is difficult to ignore the effects of diet, since it has such a fundamental qualitative impact on the very body tissues that Marcus and I palpate and treat daily: the muscle tone and quality of a smoker-drinker-fast food addict is quite radically different from that of a patient following a healthy diet and lifestyle – that much I can assure you!
We are fortunate that our osteopathic degree includes a diploma in dietetics, and we decided right from the start that Bridge to Health would actively promote dietary advice alongside osteopathic treatment. The form this service takes is very straightforward.
Diet Diary
Patients are asked to fill in a diet diary over a typical period of ten days – i.e. not involving atypical partying and dining out… They are asked to provide some general information about their diet, for example the type of bread and milk (if relevant) used, what oil is used for cooking or salads etc. On a daily basis, they then fill in with as much detail what is eaten and drunk, in what quantity and at what time. As relevant, patients are equally encouraged to provide information about symptoms, frame of mind, mood etc. As such, this process is known as a “diet-symptom diary“.
On completion, the diary is returned to us for analysis and review, which usually takes a week to ten days. We tend to use a combined quantitative and qualitative approach to interpret findings more systematically. Our emphasis is to provide guidelines tending towards the healthiest diet possible, whilst addressing causes of concern specific to each patient, for example weight loss, diabetes, reflux/hiatus hernia etc.
Effects and Causes of Diet, and Making Changes
We then schedule a review session with our patient, the focus of which is essentially positive: we aim to highlight existing positive features of the pre-existing diet, stress areas and causes of concern, and then lay-out and agree some practical suggestions and advice to implement dietary improvements.
This advice encompasses a range of issues including diet content (covering all food groups, vitamins and minerals), eating patterns, food quality etc. It also takes account of important patient particulars: does the patient live alone or with other people s/he will have to compose with? Does the patient know how to cook? Is the patient exposed to a wide or narrow range of food? etc.
The key to success is that the diet improvement strategy must be patient-driven. In other words, the patient must understand the rationale behind the advice, and honestly believe that he/she can happily implement and adopt it for the long haul. For instance, wholemeal porridge with cinnamon and grated apple is a great component of a diet to control diabetes or manage high blood cholesterol… but does the mere mention of “porridge” cause the patient stomach cramp?
Put simply, the nutrition advice we provide at Bridge to Health is based on sound, proven dietetics, but the patient has to be able to understand it, approve it and consistently apply it. With this in mind, we also make provision for the patient to feel free to contact us a few times after our meeting with a progress report, or questions that may arise while adopting and adjusting to the new diet.
If you have any questions about our diet diary approach, feel free to contact me by email or telephone the clinic on (Uxbridge – 01895) 2000 50.
1 Comment
30 September, 2008 at 2:08 am
Your approach to diet sounds very practical and the diet-diary and diet-symptoms diary techniques would be great for newly diagnosed diabetics.
Could be even more useful for adolescents now being diagnosed with “adult” type 2 diabetes because for these younger people it is even more important that they feel good about their diet and food.
Walter Adamson
Melbourne, Australia
http://www.diabetorati.com