5.9 What Next? Developing Your Own Approach to Functional Nutrition

Now that you’ve reached this stage of the module you may be thinking about changing you own diet for health reasons. You may also still be confused as to what, if any, are the differences between different functional nutrition interventions.

In Table 5.7 in the next module summary section we have combined the advantages and disadvantages of all the of the nutrition plans and diets discussed in this module so you can compare and contrast. What you will have noticed is how similar many of these nutrition approaches are. The main messages are about increasing vegetable intake and reducing refined sugar and processed foods, alongside gluten-containing grains and dairy, if applicable.

The key to utilising these approaches are to pick one that works for the patient. After all they are the ones that will have to follow it! For some this means reducing down certain food groups and increasing others. For other people, they may already be vegetarian but need the support to ensure their diet contains all the necessary macro and micronutrients.

If we were to pick one nutrition plan at nutrihub, then the anti-inflammatory diet incorporating the high alkaline load foods with Mediterranean pyramid is the easiest to follow and achieves demonstrable benefits. For others, the Paleo diet (including reducing grains and starchy vegetables over and above the Mediterranean diet approach) is a stand out way of achieving optimal health.

What we have also highlighted as just as important, if not more so, is the timings when we eat. Anyone can incorporate Time Restricted Feeding (TRF) into his or her eating plan. Early studies are very promising as to the positive changes that simply increasing the overnight fasting hours (i.e. 16:8 diet) can have on metabolic imbalances.

What we are aiming to achieve with the functional nutrition approach is to present a patient with a balanced diet that suits their individual needs and health requirements. What we don’t want to do is outline an obsessively restrictive diet. What you put in the functional nutrition intervention is every bit as important as what you leave out. What we also emphasise is that people think of any recommended functional nutrition interventions not as simply a short-term solution (except for specialist diets like FODMAPs), but a long-term approach to maintain and optimise great health and energy.