How Can Dietary Changes Improve Overall Well-Being?
When it comes to enhancing five's overall well-being through diet, the advice of Registered Dietitians and healthcare professionals is invaluable. From supporting gut health with a high-fiber diet to reducing added sugars for faster recovery, we've gathered five transformative dietary changes that have made a real impact on clients' health.
- Support Gut Health with High-Fiber Diet
- Hydration Enhances Overall Well-being
- Balance Meals for Blood Sugar Stability
- Hydration and Anti-Inflammatory Foods Boost Health
- Reduce Added Sugars for Faster Recovery
Support Gut Health with High-Fiber Diet
Through the gut-brain axis, we now know that our diet can have a significant impact on our mental health. I use a high-fiber, anti-inflammatory dietary approach to support the gut microbiome, which benefits clients' overall health and well-being in so many ways - from mood and mental health to digestion, to skin health and immunity.
Hydration Enhances Overall Well-being
Appropriate hydration makes a big difference for my clients. People get really busy, and not only does that impact their food choices, but it also impacts their fluid intake. When people start to optimally hydrate and then have a day or two where they are beneath their goal, they definitely report back to me that they notice a difference. Water is involved in every metabolic reaction in the body to some extent. Proper hydration supports healthy digestion; skin, hair, and nail health; cardiovascular health; cognitive clarity; and temperature regulation, among so many other things.
Balance Meals for Blood Sugar Stability
The biggest dietary change that makes the largest impact on one's well-being is eating balanced meals. Balanced meals are meals with protein, healthy fats, and carbohydrates. Due to the difference in how the body metabolizes these macronutrients, well-balanced meals prevent blood sugar spikes and crashes. Conversely, carbohydrate-only meals cause the blood sugar to rise and lower quickly. Imbalances in blood sugar contribute to metabolic dysfunction, hormone disruption, fatigue, brain fog, sugary cravings, and more. At your next meal, ask yourself, "Is there protein, healthy fats, and carbohydrates in this meal?" - your body will thank you.
Hydration and Anti-Inflammatory Foods Boost Health
Focusing on proper hydration and an anti-inflammatory diet can really transform your skin and overall health. Just drinking enough water and eating the right foods to fight or reduce inflammation can make you glow from the inside out. It's incredible how simple tweaks to your diet and water intake can make such a big difference in how you look and feel!
Reduce Added Sugars for Faster Recovery
As a physician assistant, I often work closely with nutritionists in the post-operative setting. There, sugar often emerges as a factor in poor outcomes, so we've developed a healing protocol that eliminates most added sugars, and have found that the closer a patient adheres to this diet, the faster they tend to recover.
But cutting back on sweets isn't just for recovering patients. Inflammation has emerged as one of the biggest culprits in modern ill health, and sugar plays a key role in this process.
So, I've begun to speak to all my patients about replacing some of the largest sources of added sugars, and for most people, that means altering their drink consumption. It's not just soda, although that is a common vice. It's also alcohol, sweetened coffee drinks, and for children, fruit juices.
Reducing even a single serving of these a day is a great start, and patients can notice the difference immediately. Superficial concerns, like acne, often clear up quickly. Once they see the external effects of cutting back on these sweet treats, it's easy to take a step further and continue improving health by limiting consumption to once or twice a week.
