Nutritional Medicine
What does treatment involve?
While in the majority of instances nutritional prescriptions are based
on a detailed history, practitioners may use a variety of individual
nutritional investigations to understand the individual’s requirements.
Sometimes these investigations are unconventional and unproven and involve
techniques such as muscle testing. The more conventional testing methods
involve a whole range of quite specific nutritional tests that may be
done either on blood, hair or sweat and that will provide a clear and
reproducible understanding of whether your nutritional status, with respect
to the substances being tested, is within the normal range. The laboratory
that conducts the vast majority of these nutritional tests in the United
Kingdom is Biolab (9 Weymouth Street, London, W1N 3FF) and it will accept
requests for tests made by a properly qualified individual. Biolab does
not run investigations requested by members of the general public.
The use of these various nutritional investigations will allow a properly
qualified individual to then recommend quite a specific and individual
range of supplements which may be designed to either prevent illness
or treat and manage an on-going complaint.
Is it Safe?
There has recently been a lot of discussion about the safety of nutritional supplements. There is no doubt that some nutritional supplements taken in high doses can produce adverse reactions. For instance, extra Vitamin A is certainly not recommended in pregnancy as it may cause abnormalities in the foetus. High doses of Vitamin C can cause diarrhoea. In general terms nutritional supplements taken over 2 or 3 months are very, very unlikely to cause adverse reactions. However, supplements taken over a long period of time, such as B6 for premenstrual syndrome have, in a very small number of cases, been reported to cause nerve damage. This has usually involved very high doses, far higher doses than those usually recommended by responsible nutritional therapists. Excessive doses of zinc and selenium have been reported in some instances to suppress the immune system and there has also been a suggestion that prolonged use of evening primrose oil may make some forms of epilepsy slightly worse. However, it is important to stress that in general nutritional supplements are very safe. There have, for instance, been no reported deaths due to nutritional supplementation in the United Kingdom, a situation that is dramatically different to that from the prescription of anti-inflammatories for arthritis.
