How To Take Control Of Your Health

Posted by Linda Lazarides on October 4, 2009 under Your Health | 3 Comments to Read

Do you have any of these..?

• Constant digestive / IBS type problems: constipation, diarrhoea (diarrhea), bloating or griping pains
• Or pounding headaches
• Skin spots or rashes that just won’t go away
• Drained by incessant fatigue
• Nervous or hormonal problems
• Blood sugar problems or borderline diabetes
• Swollen, painful joints
• Can’t lose weight even on a low-calorie diet…

Believe me, I’ve been there, and so have all the people who’ve come to me for help. First you feel in control because you went to your doctor. “He/she is an expert and will know what to do.”

But maybe after a while you got blank looks or evasive answers to your questions. Questions like “How long do I have to take this medicine before I’m cured?” Or “The medicine has helped one symptom but caused another one” or “I’m just not feeling better.”

As you started feeling your health wasn’t really under control, maybe you tried reading everything you could find about your condition.

Maybe then you went back to your doctor and tried to discuss some of the alternatives that have worked for other people. A good doctor usually says “Yes, why not give it a go, it can’t do any harm.” But maybe your doctor didn’t. Maybe he became a little bit patronising when you mentioned vitamins or special diets or herbal medicines. Even worse, maybe you were told “There’s no evidence that any of these things could help your condition”. Maybe there was even a subtle hint that it was “your fault” the medicines weren’t making you feel better.

Doctor’s statements are powerfully hypnotic. Challenging your doctor often seems unthinkable. Like many others, you might have “secretly” tried out a bit of acupuncture, or perhaps a diet you’ve read about. It’s a step in the right direction, but a lot of people give up too soon.

Don’t Become Resigned To Your “Fate”

These charts show some of the success rates I achieved when I used to work for a doctor. Each set of two bars represents a health problem I worked on. The white bar represents the total number of people the doctor referred to me with that problem. The black bar represents the total who got better on my “alternative” nutritional treatments.

My employer was a progressive doctor who knew from personal experience that for long-term health conditions such as the ones listed above, alternatives can often work better. After all, if any prescription medicine actually cured these conditions, they wouldn’t be “long-term”!

The results speak for themselves. I assessed each individual person based on their symptoms and what they were eating; then I helped them find out what was safe for them to eat. If I thought they weren’t absorbing their vitamins and minerals properly, or needed a good “internal cleanse” I prescribed suitable nutritional or herbal products.

I Know A Little Of What You’re Going Through

I’ve had a lot of health problems to cope with myself. I went through many years of excruciating headaches that would sometimes go on for three days. For a long time I also had an irritable bowel and severe gas and bloating. I’ve had problems with sleeping, menstrual pain, back pain, the beginnings of rheumatoid arthritis in my fingers and spine, problems with energy and weight loss, and at one point I started to develop memory problems and was worried about Alzheimers. All these are gone, except for a bit of back-ache when I stand still for too long, but that’s due to an old injury…

What Treatments Do I Use?

It’s never easy trying to describe what a nutritional therapist or naturopathic nutritionist does. Everyone has a different idea in their mind. Yes I give people diets to follow. These are often “diagnostic” diets to help them find out what foods they really need to avoid.

For some people, you need to add certain foods to their diet. For instance women with endometriosis or fibroids must (if they want to get better) regularly consume cabbage, broccoli and soya milk.

Others have intestines with clogged up absorption surfaces, and their vitamins or minerals can’t get through properly. So they start to get nervous problems or skin rashes. Some of these people need ten times more of a particular vitamin than the average person does. But whatever tranquillisers or anti-inflammatory creams your doctor prescribes, they are not going to clean out your intestines for you, so the problem will just keep coming back.

Please don’t give up your quest for the solution to your problem. It might be closer than you think.

Find Out More

I am now offering an online consultation service in order to give people personal, individual help. But if you don’t yet feel ready for that,  you  will find a lot of help in my book Treat Yourself With Nutritional Therapy. It has sections on how to assess yourself, how to test different foods, what foods can help which conditions, and how to prepare healthy meals. There are also over 100 recipes. (For those of you who are already using some nutritional therapy, all the recipes are wheat-, dairy- and yeast-free.)
Right-click here and “save link as” to download and print a copy of the Contents page.

I don’t believe in waffle, so Treat Yourself with Nutritional Therapy contains an enormous number of facts and pieces of interesting and intriguing research. Most important of all: knowledge is the key to controlling your health.

Linda Lazarides is a nutritional health expert, author of seven books, and founder of the British Association for Nutritional Therapy.

Get a copy of Treat Yourself with Nutritional Therapy

• From Amazon.co.uk
• As An Instant Download
• Sign up for one of Linda’s newsletters
• Sign up for a Personal Health & Diet Programme

Comments from Linda Lazarides’ Readers and the Media
“Inspirational and mouth-watering”
Here’s Health Magazine London
“You are more knowledgeable than any Doctor I’ve ever been to. Your book gives me hope.”
“EXCELLENT. First class advice. Yummy recipes.”
Food writer Michelle Berriedale-Johnson
“By far the best eating regime I have come across. I have lost 35 lbs and recommend your book to all my friends.”
“I have lost a lot of water retention and have made major progress with dealing with my chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. Your book has changed my life. My family remembers me barely able to walk.”
“This book is an invaluable source of information for anyone who is serious about health issues”
Hazel Courteney The Sunday Times, London
“How did I survive without this book?”
Nutrition and Health
“This book merits a four-star rating”
Health and Fitness Magazine
“Linda Lazarides doesn’t put a foot wrong. She won’t give you any advice that isn’t sound and well-founded”
Dr Damien Downing, Senior Editor
Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine

Recovering from anorexia

Posted by Linda Lazarides on April 2, 2009 under Your Health | Be the First to Comment

I’m not an expert on anorexia. The advice I give to those who ask me for help aims most of all to be good common sense.

First, you need to think about why you have anorexia. The more honest anorexics I’ve spoken to admit it’s their way of feeling in control. And it’s also got a lot to do with having an addictive and maybe a compulsive personality.

Self-expression
Many people with anorexia are using it as a way of expressing themselves. Just like when you were angry with your mum as a small child and the only way you could manipulate her was by refusing to eat.

A woman with anorexia (let’s call her “Lisa”) worked in my office once. She was secretive about it, covering up her arms and legs so that I couldn’t see how thin she was. Lisa had issues with being told what to do. Whenever I asked her to do filing work, which she felt was beneath her because it was a job I never did myself, she never openly objected, but she would do it very sloppily.

It turned out that Lisa’s way of expressing her objections was by not eating. One day she very pointedly asked me to unscrew a jar for her. I unscrewed it very easily and she used this as an opportunity to say “I think you’ve probably realised there’s something wrong, haven’t you.” I didn’t really know what she was talking about, but I said yes anyway to encourage her to talk.

“The fact is, I’ve suffered from anorexia for a long time, and it’s got much worse since I’ve been working for you. I’m finding that the filing work is really making it worse, so could you maybe do that instead of me?”

Manipulation
Yes, it was childish manipulation and I wasn’t having any of it. But how sad it was to be stuck at that level of emotional development. When you have such a distorted way of looking at the world maybe it is very tempting, in a world where thin = beautiful, to take your habit just that little bit further until it becomes compulsive.

Some anorexics who claim to be recovering do not really have any intention of doing so. They approach nutritionists for help, not with eating more, but with coping with the side effects of malnutrition. For instance “Is there a vitamin pill I can take to give me more energy?” or “I’ve put on a lot of weight due to water retention because of my anorexia. What should I do to get rid of it?”

If you’re determined
If you’re really determined to get better, people around you will always be glad to help. Yes, it’s scary to eat normally – you think you’re going to look like Pavarotti the minute you eat a potato chip or a piece of steak. But you will not get rid of this mindset unless you throw down your defences and come out of isolation. A really good step is to join a group like the Eating Disorders Association or its US equivalent. Psychotherapy can also help. Try to make friends with people who eat sensibly. Ask them for help and copy what they eat. If they are not overweight then if you eat the same as them you won’t get overweight either. It’s hard at first as your appetite will be small, but perseverance will reap its rewards.

Here’s a picture of a starving child. The tummy is swollen with water retention caused by protein deficiency. I don’t want to be harsh but I think voluntary self-starvation is an insult to children like this who are dying because they cannot get enough food.