Holistic Wellness: How a Holistic Nutritionist Can Transform Your Health

Nobody tells cancer patients that chemotherapy wrecks their gut lining in just four days, and your oncologist is probably too busy saving your life to mention the digestive disaster that's about to unfold. I've been doing this work for 30 years in St. John's, and this gap in patient care absolutely frustrates me.

Back in 1994, suggesting that nutrition could help during cancer treatment got you labeled a quack by the medical establishment. Now I'm speaking at medical conferences because doctors finally figured out what I've been saying all along - your body doesn't compartmentalize problems the way hospitals organize their departments.

Why Most Doctors Don't Know This Stuff

Medical school gives future doctors maybe four hours of nutrition training compared to the 200+ hours they spend learning about pharmaceuticals. So you get excellent emergency care but pretty lousy help with chronic problems that develop over months or years.

Here's how it typically goes - your blood work shows inflammation, so you get prescribed anti-inflammatory medication. The numbers look better on paper and everyone's happy, except you still feel awful because nobody bothered asking what's causing the inflammation in the first place.

That's exactly where holistic wellness approaches fill a crucial gap, and I'm not talking about the crystal-waving variety. I mean the kind of detective work that asks boring but important questions like "when did this actually start" and "what else was changing in your life around that time."

I spend 90 minutes with new clients while most doctors get 15 minutes per appointment, so guess who's more likely to uncover meaningful connections between seemingly unrelated health issues.

The Problems Everyone Seems to Ignore

Cancer treatment is absolutely brutal on your entire system, not just the cancer cells everyone's focused on eliminating. Chemotherapy deliberately suppresses immune function while simultaneously shredding the protective lining of your digestive tract, and radiation therapy messes with your cells' ability to produce energy properly.

Most oncology practices simply can't address these widespread effects because they're completely overwhelmed with keeping patients alive, which is obviously their top priority and exactly what they should be doing.

But here's what really bothers me after three decades of practice - different chemotherapy drugs create entirely different nutritional disasters. Someone receiving Adriamycin needs completely different supportive care than someone getting Taxol, and I've been tracking these patterns for years while working with oncologists who actually want their patients to feel somewhat human during treatment.

The autoimmune situation is even more frustrating because doctors routinely hand out immune suppressants without investigating why someone's immune system went haywire in the first place. It could be intestinal permeability from years of ibuprofen use, or food reactions triggering inflammatory cascades, or chronic stress combined with specific nutrient deficiencies creating the perfect storm.

A qualified holistic nutritionist spends time on this detective work while supporting medical treatment rather than trying to replace it.

What Actually Works and What's Complete Garbage

After three decades of practice, I can usually spot who's going to succeed within the first week of working together. The people who fail typically want magic bullet solutions or think they can ignore their doctors' advice, while the ones who succeed understand that fixing chronic health problems takes months of consistent work alongside proper medical care.

Everything in your body connects to everything else, which is why isolated treatments often fail. Crappy sleep quality screws up hormone production, which tanks blood sugar control, which increases systemic inflammation, which makes your medications less effective than they should be.

Your individual genetics matter enormously in determining what approaches will actually help you. I've watched Crohn's disease patients thrive on specific diets that would absolutely destroy someone with ulcerative colitis, and some people need massive B vitamin doses because of genetic variants while others get jittery from tiny amounts of caffeine.

At Ascend Corporate Wellness, every single protocol is customized because one-size-fits-all advice is completely worthless for complex health problems. Active cancer patients need entirely different nutritional support than cancer survivors, who need different approaches than healthy people trying to prevent future problems.

Let's Be Completely Honest About Limitations

Holistic nutritionists cannot diagnose diseases, cure anything, or tell you to stop taking prescribed medications, and anyone making those claims is operating dangerously outside their scope of practice.

What we can provide is research-backed nutritional support that might help your body handle medical treatment more effectively. Some clients report feeling more energetic, digesting food more easily, or experiencing fewer treatment side effects, while others don't notice dramatic changes but feel better supported overall.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health continues funding research on integrative approaches because mounting evidence shows that combining proper nutritional support with conventional medical care often produces better outcomes than either approach alone.

Insurance companies cover my services for medically necessary nutritional counseling because there's legitimate therapeutic value, but nobody should expect miracle medicine or instant transformations.

How This Process Actually Works

The first appointment involves extensive detective work where I want to understand your complete health story, including details that might seem completely unrelated to your current problems. I'm looking for patterns around when symptoms first appeared, what was happening in your life during that time, and which treatments have already failed.

Sometimes I suggest functional tests that examine nutrient status, inflammatory markers, or digestive function in much greater detail than standard blood work provides. Everything gets shared with your medical team because coordinated care consistently produces better results than working in isolation.

Changes always happen gradually because dramatic dietary overhauls almost always fail within a few weeks. We might start with basic digestive support, gradually add stress management techniques, then build toward more comprehensive protocols as your body starts responding positively.

The people who get the best results understand they're making long-term investments in health improvement rather than seeking quick symptom relief. They're willing to track their responses carefully, communicate openly about what's working and what isn't, and stick with the process even when progress feels frustratingly slow.

Holistic wellness approaches work best when supporting medical treatment rather than trying to replace it, and anyone promising miracle cures or telling you to abandon conventional care is absolutely lying to you.

The realistic goal is supporting your body's natural ability to handle whatever medical treatment you need while optimizing function wherever possible. Sometimes that makes a huge difference in how you feel, sometimes it helps moderately, but either outcome is better than completely ignoring nutrition while dealing with complex health challenges.