Skin problems may not be life threatening, but because they are very visible they can make a serious dent to your confidence and impact your quality of life. Eczema is one of the most common chronic skin complaints. Did you know that the name eczema is derived form a Greek word meaning 'to boil'? It seems to perfectly describe the inflamed, red skin which is often intensely itchy.

The conventional treatment involves use of topical creams - in other words dealing with the outward symptoms. However, the safety of the long term use of some of the steroid creams is questionable - corticosteroids are known to affect growth, weaken bones, suppress the adrenal glands and cause many other problems.

The good news is that there is another way to deal with eczema. Nutritional therapy can help eczema by correcting underlying imbalances for a more sustained solution. I find that most of the clients who come to see me for support for eczema have some physiological 'weak spots'. They tend to have more allergies and an immune system which is creating higher levels of inflammation in the body. The other problem area is a disordered fat metabolism which makes their skin dryer and less able to hold moisture.

One eczema client I saw recently also complaint about frequent bloating and digestive disturbances, and suffered from hay fever during the summer months. Well functioning immune system can be the key to controlling eczema symptoms, and as up 80% of your immunity is gut related, the first step we took was to start working on improving the health of her digestion and gut bacterial balance.

We also supplemented with some targeted essential fatty acids, and supported her fat digestion through enzymes that help break down fats. The improvements in her digestive symptoms correlated with the reduced severity of her eczema. We are now able to control her symptoms through balanced diet and regular fatty acid supplementation.

We also identified that stress was one of the triggers for increased eczema symptoms. Stress tends to reduce the digestive capacity and disturb the beneficial bacterial balance in the gut. Knowing this link, we decided that during stressful periods my client should take extra digestive support and supplemental friendly bacteria to counteract these effects.

If you are suffering from skin problems (or just the stress part!), do get in touch to see if nutrition could offer you some solutions!

As my previous post shows, stress is not just confined to the head, it has an impact on the entire body and can make a real dent to your physical well-being. Having said that, not many people come to me with the direct intention of getting support for stress-related symptoms. They may come with digestive complaints, or feel very low in energy. What often transpires during the consultation is that they have a number of different on-going sources of stress in their lives.

I recently saw a woman in her mid-thirties who complained about constantly feeling tired and run down and was finding it hard to lose weight. She had three year old toddler and had recently returned back to work. Juggling being a good mum and still having a career - not stressful at all! She also complained that she was beginning to get some IBS-like digestive symptoms and wasn't sure what was behind them. She was regularly propping herself up with cups of coffee, and often felt too tired after work to spend any quality time with her toddler.

We decided to check the current status of her stress hormone production through a saliva test. In long-term stress what tends to happen is that initially the stress hormone production increases, but if the sources of stress don't go away (which they often don't!) then the production will eventually decrease as the adrenal glands secreting the hormones get gradually more depleted. As you will also need these same hormones for daily energy production, having exhausted adrenal glands will also lead to generally feeling tired and lethargic. It can also lead to sleep disturbances, and make it harder for you to lose weight.

The test results showed that her adrenals had indeed entered the exhaustion stage, and were in desperate need of support. We modified her diet to ensure that she was getting more sustainable energy, and gave her specific nutrients to boost the functioning of her adrenal glands. Just three weeks into her programme she was already feeling far less croggy in the mornings, and had energy left in the evenings to spend some time with her toddler after work.

If you suspect you have stress-related symptoms such as tiredness or digestive disturbances, give me a call to have a chat about how nutrition could help move you from 'barely existing' to 'full of beans'.

Stress, energy and nutrition

How are your energy levels doing? Most of are trying to find balance between juggling work, family, social life, hobbies... When asked, most people think their energy levels are less now than they used to be, and many wouldn’t say no to a bit of an energy boost.

Does all that sound a bit too familiar? The start of the year is always a good time to focus on health and wellbeing, and the aim of this post is to give you some quick and easy ways of boosting your energy and improving your over all wellbeing.

One of the most noticeable effects of the fluctuating energy levels tend to be the mid-morning and afternoon dips when all you want to do is to either close your eyes for a sneaky nap or, more realistically, grab a coffee or a chocolate bar to get you out of that slump.

The problem with coffee (or any caffeinated drink) and sweets is that they give you an energy boost that is very short lived. So before you know it, you’ll need another cup of coffee to keep you going.

The reason this happens is that both coffee and sweets make the amount of sugar circulating in your blood stream rise very quickly to high levels. Sweets do that because of their high sugar content, and the caffeine in coffees and teas causes your body to release sugar from storage back into circulation, so the end result is the same.

Ideally your body wants you to only have about two teaspoons of sugar in the blood stream at any one time. As an average chocolate bar contains at least four or five teaspoons of sugar, some corrective action is required to keep the balance. This means that the rapid high - which gives you the initial energy boost - is quickly followed by a low. Low blood sugar levels go hand in hand with feeling irritable, sleepy, finding it hard to concentrate, and worst of all, craving for something sugary to get you going again.

Apart from the ever fluctuating energy levels, the blood sugar fluctuations also make it harder for you to control your weight. Unless you are planning on going for a run or having a good session at the gym, your body doesn’t really need all the energy provided by your ‘pick me up’ snack or drink. So if it’s not immediately required, the energy has to be stored. And guess what – your body is an expert at converting excess sugar into fat! The more energy fluctuations you have, the more storage activity there is likely to be going on in your body.

To give you lasting energy – and help stop any extra pounds piling on – all you need to do is choose to eat foods that release their energy more slowly. So here are some simple rules for the new more energetic you:

• The quick burn foods tend to be either sweet, white or fluffy (such as sweets, biscuits, fluffy cakes, white refined grains like white rice and pasta). Avoid those, and instead choose foods that are thick, fibrous or protein (vegetables, whole grains, beans, lentils, lean meat, fish etc).
• In practice, ditch your fluffy and sweet breakfast cereals, and instead choose porridge (fibrous), rye bread (thick and fibrous) or live yoghurt (protein) with berries or fruit. Eggs are also great for breakfast, but might be more convenient at weekends when you don’t need to rush so much.
• Whatever you choose, don’t skip breakfast. It sets your energy levels for the day and will help you avoid the sugary snacks later on.
• Good slow burn snacks to replace the biscuits and chocolates include nuts and seeds. Make a mixture from your favourite nuts and seeds and carry some in your handbag.
• Avoid the dried fruit trap – they seem like a healthier option to sweets and biscuits, but are just as sugary. Choose fresh fruit instead, which still has all the fibre and vitamins intact.
• Make sure your lunch includes some protein. Have some fish or chicken in your sandwich or cottage cheese or beans with your jacket potato. Avoid soups made only of vegetables. Protein digests more slowly and gives you a slower and steadier release of energy.
• The simplest trick of all is to keep well hydrated by drinking enough plain water. Dehydration can make you feel really tired and irritable, so aim to drink at least 1.5 litres every day. The easiest way to achieve this is to fill a large bottle of water in the morning (most offices have a water fountain) and sip from it throughout the day.

There is more information about nutrition, stress and health on my web-site at www.sannahealth.com

Nutrition and skin health

Did you know that skin is the largest organ in your body? Like any organ, it needs nutrients to keep it healthy and in good condition. It is also the external indicator of how your body is doing on the inside. Although important, taking care of it purely from the outside isn’t going to be enough if you want a glowing healthy looking skin.

What you eat and how you digest your foods matter when it comes to keeping your skin radiant. Nutrition is fundamentally involved at every stage of skin development. Just think of the fact that every single cell in the body is made of the raw materials it gets from the foods you eat.

Vitamin C for example is required for the production of collagen, the mesh that keeps the skin together and gives it its strength and structure. No vitamin C, no new collagen produced.

Low levels of zinc in the diet can result in stretch marks and poor healing. Your skin is continuously renewing itself and old skin cells are being replaced. Zinc is needed for efficient production of the new cells.

What about wrinkles then – are there any magic nutrients to combat the laughter lines? The skin’s suppleness is mainly down to two components, collagen and elastin. They can both get damaged over time from pollution, radiation from the sun and from lack of nutrients.

Elastin is a bit like rubber band that helps your skin bounce back when you stretch it. If the rubber wears off, the skin can start sagging and wrinkles will form. The best nutrients that help protect collagen and elastin are vitamins A, C and E and selenium.

So what are the simple steps to healthier and younger looking skin?

Drink more water. Moisturising your skin from the inside is just as important as looking after it from the outside. Aim for at leat 1.5 litres a day.

Increase oily fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines, trout, tuna) in your diet. Your skin also needs good fats to keep it supple.

Snack on nuts and seeds, another source of good fats. They are also rish in zinc, a mineral which is often low in people who suffer from acne.

Fresh vegetables - the more the better, in a variety of colours. They will give you an abundance of nutrients that protect your skin from ageing.

Enjoy fresh berries. They are an amazingly rich source of vitamins and minerals relative to their size. Have them as snacks, or mix into yoghurt or porridge to give a real boost to your breakfast.

Avoid excess sugar. Refined sugar can damage the structure of the skin, making it less flexible and more prone to wrinkling. Don't add sugar to drinks and cereals, and avoid or limit sugary foods like soft drinks, sweets, jams, cakes and biscuits.

Nutrition can also help with more serious skin complaints such as eczema, adult acne, and psoriasis. This is where the healthy diet is just the start – often more specific support of different body processes are needed for a sustained solution. In one case of severe adult acne that wasn’t responding to antibiotics we needed to support fat digestion, liver detox and adrenal function. After just a month on the programme there was a visible improvement in the condition of the skin. You can find out more about nutritional therapy on my web-site on www.sannahealth.com.

Joint health seems to be the topical issue for me at the moment. Not only did I injure my Achilles tendon last year (and it's still healing), but I’ve recently seen quite a few clients with various joint problems.
Arthritis and other related conditions can really impact the quality of life, and many put up with long term pain and discomfort. The good news is that nutritional therapy can be very helpful and make a real difference to the severity of the symptoms.

As with many chronic conditions, one of the main areas nutrition can help with is inflammation. Inflammation causes pain, swelling and general irritation around any affected areas – in the case of arthritis mostly around the joints.

To help boost the amount of anti-inflammatory messengers in the body you should increase the amount good fats in your diet. These include oily fish and nuts and seeds. On the other hand, anything promoting further inflammation should be reduced or avoided. The main culprits include coffee, alcohol, sugar and saturated fats.

Food intolerances can also be behind increased inflammatory messenger load in the body, so I tend to recommend testing for any of my arthritis clients. There are also plenty of useful supplements that can be helpful, depending on the individual health profile. Glucosamine and chondroitin are probably the best known ones, but concentrated doses of compounds from ginger and turmeric in a supplement form have also been shown to have an impact.

At the end of the day, nutrition can be a much more gentle and natural way of managing arthritis and can help avoid being dependant on pain killers. It never ceases to amaze me how powerful an effect just some simple dietary changes can have on health and wellbeing.

Food Intolerances

One of the most frequently asked questions I come across in my practice is ‘Can you please test me for food intolerances?’. Funnily enough, one of the tests I use the most infrequently is the food intolerance test. Let me explain why.

It is often the case that food intolerances are not the cause of the health problems the client come to see me for, but in fact the symptom. Food intolerances can often develop as a result of underlying digestive disturbances. Perhaps the easiest way to explain this is to look at the link between digestion and the immune system. The immune system is the ‘gate keeper’ that vets everything we ingest and determines what is safe to allow in the body. If your digestion is not working well, the immune system may not recognise the larger undigested food particles that it is now presented with and goes on the defensive. As a result, you may experience diarrhoea, bloating, stomach cramps, skin problems and a whole host of other symptoms.

In other words, the inability to properly digest any foods can cause your body to treat them as ‘foreign’ and you will start experiencing unpleasant symptoms every time you eat those foods. It is perhaps then no surprise that wheat gluten and dairy proteins, both of which are relatively hard work for the digestion, are the two foods most people report to be intolerant to.

So when I see clients with food intolerances, the most frequent test I suggest is not an intolerance test, but a comprehensive digestive stool analysis. This gives me a detailed view of the state of the digestive system. I find that many times, once the digestion is back into working optimally the food intolerance symptoms are also a thing of the past.

Nutrition, digestion, and the 'diagnosis' of IBS

I've just enjoyed a relaxing week off taking in the delights of Cornish coast line. The scenery was beautiful, we got lots of good walking done, but most of all I really enjoyed staying in a self-catering cottage. In the past I've found going on holidays can sometimes be quite a lot of hard work on the digestion. You end up eating foods you wouldn't normally at home, and the meal size are often bigger in restaurants that I'd choose to have if I was cooking for myself (and once the food is on my plate I'll happily eat it!).

Self-catering allowed me to bring me my vegetable juicer with me - juicing is one of those things I'd love to do more of, but don't always have enough time. But on holiday there's generally more time, so more juicing got done too! So after the week's holiday I felt both physically and mentally restored (although I must confess that I also enjoyed the occasional cream tea - when in Rome etc...)

So digestive problems can ruin a perfectly good holiday, and can make every day life a misery too. One of the most common complaints clients come to see me with is IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) to get some nutritional help where medical support has failed. It seems to be one of those terms that get used when no other explanation can be easily found for continued problems with constipation, diarrhoea, cramping and other unpleasant symptoms.

As it’s not the most glamorous subject to bring up, and won’t really lift the tone of any dinner party conversation, many have been putting up with the symptoms for a long time before deciding to seek help. When clients come to see me, they complain about getting bored with the narrow range of ‘safe’ foods they feel they are able to eat, and for many, their symptoms have also put some serious constraints on their social life.

One such client came to see me a few months ago. She had been putting up with constipation, cramps and loose stools for over 6 years – often having to make the dash for the loo at very short notice. By this point she wasn’t really keen to go out at all, let alone enjoy a shopping trip with friends – she daren’t risk it.

She was feeling constantly tired and run down and was wondering if she was getting all the necessary nutrients from the limited range of foods she felt safe to eat. Her weight had also been slowly creeping up over the years, and she found it difficult to shed the extra pounds.

Our first priority was to see what was lurking in her gut that was causing all the problems – we ran a stool test and found a parasite. She also had very low friendly bacteria – friendly bacteria help protect the gut against intruders amongst other things. They also help digest foods, and boost the immune system. No wonder she’d been complaining about always catching every cold going.

We managed to get rid of the parasite with specific herbs and built up her colonies of friendly bacteria with some supplements. At the same time we started slowly broadening the ‘safe’ foods list and designing a whole new and more varied way of eating. The first priority was breakfast – like many other busy professionals, my client had been skipping breakfast as she wasn’t prioritising it and thought she couldn’t spare the time. What a huge difference that and other small adjustments to her diet made – she no longer had the huge cravings she had had for chocolate cookies!

Now, three month’s down the line – running for the loo is no longer an issue – her gut is totally normal and as an added bonus, there have been some not so sneaky changes in her weight as well, this time downwards rather than upwards.

Snow in two countries!

March ended up being the busiest month so far this year. Maybe it was because Easter was so early, or maybe it was just because I had so many interesting projects on the go all at once. I held a workshop for mums and mums to be at a brand new (and very lovely) members only spa in Putney called Cupcakemum. There are more workshops to come during the spring on weaning and pregnancy nutrition specifically, and I'm also looking forward to sampling their spa facilities.

For Easter we decided to have a little break and booked a B&B in North Norfolk for a couple of nights. For a while now it has been my dream to own a barn conversion when I grow up, so I was excited to find a B&B in a recently converted barn. And I wasn't disappointed. The barn itself was gorgeous, our bedroom probably bigger than our lounge with a lovely roll top bath, and the breakfast was just simply fabulous. I guess I would go an about the food, it being one of my big passions in life, but it's so refreshing to get something a bit different from the cheap sausages and greasy bacon that often make up the traditional cooked breakfast. Instead we got fresh berries and fruit with yoghurt and muesli, followed by homemade wholemeal bread, warm croissants, homemade jams, cold cuts and some lovely smelly French cheeses. So some healthy bits combined with a few treats, and about thousand times more tasty than the basic English breakfast. The owners were absolutely lovely too, and very helpful in recommending places to see and which pubs offered best food. I would highly recommend them! We nearly got snowed in on Easter Monday and the country side looked very idyllic covered in about an inch of snow.

Then it was off to Finland and a bit more snow the following week. I'd been asked to do some lecturing at a natural health institute for trainee reflexologists and art therapists in the fundamentals of nutritional therapy. Great chance to visit the family and do some work at the same time. I love lecturing and we ended up having great lively conversations about how difficult it is to know what foods are actually good for you because of marketing and advertising messages that are often just there to sell the products rather than looking out for our health.

So here we are now in April, and the next big thing on my list is going to be re-launching my web-site. I've been working on some new content to make the site more useful and informative, and it's finally nearly there. Watch this space!