Your health depends on optimal nutrition

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Without a doubt, eating well and having optimal nutrition is the number-one strategy for creating lifelong health, regardless of your starting point. You may be highly conscientious and diligent about your diet, or you may be in despair about your nutrition and miles from reaching your goal. Or, you may be “good” one day then wobble or fall down the next. Whatever the case, this section of our site is all about how to make nutrition and eating well the cornerstone to your health foundation.

Conventional medicine has only recently begun to catch on to the enormous impact nutrients have on disease prevention and even disease reversal. But over the years I’ve seen it time and again in my practice: getting the right combination of nutrients through healthy food choices and high-quality nutritional supplements can make all the difference in a woman’s physical health, energy level, and overall vitality.

As women, we’re taking care of children and aging parents, working outside the home, and still doing much of the housework and cooking — it’s no wonder we reach for frozen dinners or take-out menus when it’s time for dinner! But I’ve found that educating my patients on a new approach to food can make those tough decisions about what to eat and whether or not to use nutritional supplements much easier.

The other problem today is that even when we make an effort to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, they’re often grown in nutrient-depleted soil so they can’t offer us the full armor of vitamins and minerals our bodies require. This means that nearly every woman could benefit from some level of nutritional supplementation, but you need to know which ones are right for you and what to look for to make sure you’re getting all the potential benefits.

Take a look at our many articles on the subject of nutrition and nutritional supplements for guidance. What’s wonderful is that you can optimize your health naturally every day — and it’s not as difficult as it may seem.

Our most popular resources on nutrition

To access an article, just choose from the list of excerpts below. To find more articles, use the search function below. Don’t see a topic that’s important to you? Let us know.

• Food safety
  Sometimes a diet of whole, fresh foods isn’t easy to accomplish, particularly when food safety is a concern. Here are tips on ways to limit contaminants in your everyday fresh foods.
• Choosing the best multivitamin
  Not all dietary supplements are created equally, so here’s a primer on what to look for when you pick the perfect multivitamin for your individual needs.
• 5 Multivitamin myths - should you worry about your vitamins?
  News and research about diet and nutrition seem to contradict one another daily. What’s the truth about multivitamins? Women to Women looks at 5 common myths about women’s vitamins.

 

Last Modified Date: 04/20/2011
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP