Metabolic Typing What is it? What can it do for you?
Sometimes a trip to the doctor doesn't make you feel better. You may have tried to help yourself with books and vitamin pills, or changing your diet. We all know how sensible this is. Many people struggle on with self-help, often at great expense. Without an understanding of how your body works, and what has gone wrong, how can you be sure of what you need?

In spite of our advances in technical knowledge and the millions of pounds spent on medical research, we are flabby and overweight; we can't sleep: we can't get going when we are awake. We have neuroses; we are seeing an alarming increase in degenerative diseases at the peak of life.

The traditional approach to disease has been the symptom treatment method. For a headache, an aspirin may be recommended, an antibiotic for an infection, an antihistamine for an allergy, and radiation, chemotherapy and surgery for cancer. This approach is used by complementary therapists; for example, using calcium for osteoporosis. Many people are helped by this method, but some remain unchanged, and some people may even find that their condition worsens! What helps in one person may actually worsen symptoms in another. I'm sure we all know people who have lost weight on a specific diet, but the same diet hasn't worked with someone else.

Most foods and supplements can be acid or alkaline forming in the body and have different effects on different people, but the critical factor is that, "any nutrient and any food can have opposite biochemical influences in different metabolic types". This means that a food that acidifies your system can alkalinize someone else's chemistry. The Eskimo diet would be totally unsuited to the Asian vegetarian. Your genes determine your unique biochemical and biological characteristics, and you would need to know your metabolic type in order to find out what a well-balanced diet is for you. Not knowing one's metabolic type makes it impossible to know which foods or nutrients are best for each person.

The other core discovery is that when it comes to nutrition, any health complaint or disease process can arise from opposite biochemical imbalances in different metabolic types. Thus the old adage, "one man's food is another's poison," is literally true. Here's a quick example: osteoporosis is a problem involving calcium METABOLISM. Most practitioners know that it is due to a loss of calcium, so they treat it by giving more calcium. But this approach only helps some people. Metabolic typing reveals why: In certain metabolic types, there exists an actual calcium deficiency. For these types, giving more calcium will help. But in other metabolic types that have osteoporosis, the problem is not an actual calcium deficiency but is due to a bio-unavailability: -- these people have plenty of calcium but lack the synergistic nutrients needed for calcium's proper utilization. So giving calcium to them only worsens -- not helps -- the existing imbalance.

Metabolic typing shows why nutrition should not be used allopathically--giving a certain nutrient for a certain condition. Instead, for consistent, reliable success, one must address the particular nutritional requirements of each person's metabolic type. Only then will the results be due to science and not chance. Metabolic typing sits on the cutting edge of nutritional science and holds promise of revolutionizing both our understanding of disease as well as our approach to health.

When a person is "balanced" metabolically, many disease symptoms subside because the body utilizes nutrients optimally. It is important to understand that metabolic typing does not address any specific conditions. It treats the person that has the disease, not the disease that the person has. "Only the body can heal" as long as it has the right tools for the job.

Metabolic Typing might be the new buzzword for the new millennium, but it is not a new science. Extensive research conducted over the last twenty years by William Wolcott, has led to the formation of tests that can determine your Metabolic Type. With this critical information you can now be informed about what to eat in order to obtain the best performance from your body and mind. Metabolic Typing does not recommend a "one size fits all" approach to diet like so many other approaches advise. The wrong way to think about nutrition is that one diet is right for everyone! The wrong way to think about nutrition is the same way that you use a drug!

Experience has shown that on discovering a client's metabolic type and changing their eating habits accordingly the benefits include:

* Decreased cravings
* Freedom from hunger between meals
* Improved energy
* Increased concentration
* An improved sense of well being
* Maintenance of ideal weight

Please call or email if I can tell you any more.

Sheri Dixon Dip NUT
Registered with the British Association of Nutritional Therapists
Healthexcel Metabolic Typing Associate