Orthomolecular/Nutritional medicine
Hippocrates' statement which led to thinking about food as medicine is:
"Whatever the father of a disease, the mother is always a poor diet."
Physician/Pharmacist
Dr. Philip Boerebach specialises in preventive medicine in many of its facets: vaccinations, nutritional medicine (also known as orthomolecular medicine) as well as conventional medicine.
Nutritional or Orthomolecular medicine focuses on prevention, but can also be used as a cure for many medical problems.
Nutritional interventions are generally combined with
exercise. Almost everyone will have heard of the importance of healthy food and exercise, this often times seems an open door.
Many heard arguments of patients are: "I am so much in
pain that I can or will not exercise," "I have no energy to exercise." This is when people get caught in a vicious circle of lack of exercise and developing more and more pain or other
medical discomfort and gaining weight.
It is this (downward) spiral that nutritional medicine tries to break through.
The basis is always a healthy diet. It could be that your
diet is less healthy than you've always thought.
Besides healthy food, nutritional medicine makes use of food supplements when necessary. These can speed up the process of reaching a
healthy balance again. After that the use of almost all supplements will be stopped. This is the major difference with traditional western medicine where (for example) for high blood pressure you will
have to use antihypertensives, treating the symptoms, not the cause. Also a lifelong strict diet will not be the goal of nutritional approach. A healthy person should be able to eat anything without
developing medical problems, albeit sometimes in moderation.
However, regular (allopathic) medicine is certainly used by Dr Boerebach. These interventions are usually aimed at solving an
immediate problem (When in pain an aspirin works much more quickly than adjusting your lifestyle), but in the mean time the nutritional approach can be started. This is what he means by complementary
medicine: combining the latest insights from all medical disciplines.
Health concerns that can be approached via nutritional medicine (amongst many more) in no specific order:
- fatigue (including chronic fatigue syndrome)
- thyroid (Hypo- as well as hyperthyroidism)
- auto immune diseases (rheumatism, psoriasis, diabetes etc.)
- multiple sclerosis (MS)
- hormonal disbalance (menstrual problems, subfertility)
- IBS (irritable bowel syndrome)
- gastric reflux/bloated feeling
- eczema
- high blood pressure
- high cholesterol
- fibromyalgia
- obesity/over weight
- anxiety/depression
- risk reduction to all of mentioned above
If you want to know what a consultation will look like click here.
To get recipes for inspiration click here. If you find ingredients in the recipes that conflict with the advice you got during your consultation, do not use the recipe. The advice you got from Dr Boerebach is specifically aimed at your personal health issues.