Nutrition

Lyme Disease: Treatment is a Multidisciplinary Approach

As we head into Lyme Awareness month, let us highlight the multi-modal approach that it takes to treat the complex condition that is Lyme disease. Treatment for Lyme disease is not a “one size fits all” approach and looks different for every single patient. Several factors, including but not limited to, duration of illness, parts of the body involved, co-infections present, and underlying health status, play a significant role in clinical decision making to decide what treatment(s) are appropriate for any specific patient. Lyme disease can infect any tissue in the body, and therefore has the ability to affect several body systems at once. This often leads to a multitude of symptoms across body systems that seem to be unrelated, but are in fact, all connected. Since this can look different for every patient, having a practitioner in Integrative Medicine to take the time to listen to you and put all of the pieces together is essential to achieve proper evaluation and treatment. 

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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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Tick Prevention and Good Nutrition

In this day and age, the likelihood of getting a tick bite, either directly or from a tick carried in by a pet, is pretty good! That’s the bad news. But now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, the good news is you can do something about protecting yourself. Certainly, equipping yourself with proper outdoor gear helps but you can protect yourself from the inside as well. That’s where good nutrition can lend itself. The right nutrition can really support your immune system, fighting infections and battling bacteria so it doesn’t take root, causing a myriad of symptoms. We can especially support our immune system by improving gut health (where most of the immune system lives) and lowering overall inflammation in the body. 

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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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Lyme: Diet is a BIG Deal!

Lyme and tick-borne diseases affect the body in a myriad of ways. On a basic level, they trigger the immune system. When we get infected, the immune system is designed to kick in, causing an inflammatory response, and enlisting the body’s army of mighty cells to target the invaders, killing the bacteria and restoring the body to homeostasis. When we talk about diet and nutrition, we can see that with this simple immune response, diet plays a major role.

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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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