Diet and Prevention

Supporting your Immune System: What Should You Eat?

For patients battling Lyme disease and tick-borne illnesses, nutrition plays a critical role in recovery. Food can serve so many purposes; from enjoyment and pleasure to tissue healing and reducing inflammation.  Besides avoiding major inflammatory ingredients (such as processed foods, inflammatory oils, alcohol, added sugar, and artificial sweeteners), it is important to specifically support the immune system, as that is the critical component to overall healing. For immune wellness, here are some key components:

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Burlington Vermont Nutritional Counseling for Gut Health

There are about 40 trillion bacteria in your  body, most of which are found in your gut- they are known as your gut microbiome, and they're incredibly important for overall health. Improving your microbiome and bacteria quality can transform your life and reduce many different symptoms you may be having. And as many people know who struggle with poor GI health, ica be life altering.  This is why at the Stram Center, we utilize tastings that help us get to the root cause of a health condition, and we start with the status of your microbiome in our nutritional counseling (read more about our nutritional counseling services here)... The following three powerful components are the first step to beginning your gut health journey.

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Is There a “Lyme Diet”?

For individuals affected by Lyme disease, treatment can take many forms. There are medicines and herbals. Complimentary therapies and mental health support. And diet can make a substantial impact for most people. Rather than one particular “Lyme diet”, nutrition is as individualized throughout one’s Lyme healing journey as it is throughout one’s lifetime. No one “diet” is meant to serve a person their entire lives—nutrition therapy is meant to shape one’s particular needs at any life stage or healing phase.

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Small Lifestyle Changes Help Us Win BIG

With a fresh new year upon us, maybe it’s time to reevaluate our habits. Many of us have goals for ourselves no matter the time of year but we all tend to have a heightened focus in January. It’s a time of reflection, taking inventory, if you will. This allows us to objectively assess what went well, what didn’t go so well, and how we might use everything we learned to inform our future decisions. Several key things can help us to have a positive and meaningful direction going into the new year.

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Alzheimer’s Disease and Sugar—Is There a Connection?

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 6 million people in the US are living with Alzheimer’s Disease. This number is expected to reach 13 million by 2050. 33% of seniors die from Alzheimer’s or dementia which is more than deaths from breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. There is no exact known cause for Alzheimer’s, but genetics do increase risk as well as other environmental and lifestyle factors.

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Eating and Fasting for Cognitive Care

Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia that affects memory, thinking and behavior. The symptoms of this disease eventually grow severe enough to interfere with daily tasks. But microscopic changes in the brain begin long before symptoms, or even first signs of memory loss, occur. When it comes to food and nutrition, diet plays a major role in the prevention of Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. This is because what we eat can either contribute to cognitive decline or aid in healing cellular repair and oxidative damage. 

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Eat Well for Heart Health!

As we observe National Heart Health in February, we recognize that heart disease is still the leading cause of death in both men and women living in the US. While many factors can contribute to heart disease, one of the leading causes is how and what we eat. The Standard American Diet (aka SAD) is comprised of foods and ingredients that contribute or lead to heart disease. This is in part due to the dependence on easy, packaged and processed foods that contain inflammatory ingredients. And when these inflammatory foods make up most of our diet, we lack the nourishing foods that heal and keep our hearts healthy. 

To eat for heart health, try to....

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Optimal Thyroid Health: A Focus on a Gluten-Free Diet

It’s estimated that 20 million Americans have some sort of thyroid disease, meaning an issue with their thyroid gland that causes it to either under or over-produce thyroid hormones. These hormones are responsible for regulating the body’s metabolism and without proper diagnosis and treatment, thyroid disease can lead to further complications of the heart, fertility, bone health, and weight gain or weight loss. Women are 5-8 times more likely than men to have thyroid problems.

Hyperthyroidism is when the thyroid gland overproduces hormones and as a result, the metabolism increases beyond what is healthy. Individuals with hyperthyroidism often struggle to keep weight on, despite eating adequate or increased food intake. 

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Building Immunity Starts with Your Diet

Now more than ever, we need strong immune systems. Living through a pandemic with flu season upon us, a robust immune system can keep us healthy and help us rebound faster if we do get sick. So, what helps us build a robust immune system? Everything from adequate sleep and exercise, to proper stress management and nutrition. Nutrition plays a key role in helping or hurting us. And if we want a strong immune system, there are many foods and key nutrients that can help us build it. When we talk about nutrition, it’s important to recognize that both diet and supplementation can be helpful. While the diet can supply a plentiful dose of nutrients, we often need an extra boost of specific vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants to ramp up our immunity. Some key nutrients for immunity include 

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Blood Sugar, Estrogen, and Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is directly connected to hormonal imbalance. When we talk about the complex world of hormones, we understand that many aspects influence them, such as stress, the food we eat, how we move our bodies (or lack of movement), and genetics. With breast cancer specifically, estrogen is a key player. So how does nutrition influence our estrogen?

By now you may or may not have heart of “estrogen dominance,” a condition where estrogen levels are either above normal levels or progesterone is too low. The typical estrogen dominant picture usually includes symptoms such as...

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