Nutrient Assessment
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Choosing vitamin and mineral supplements is unfortunately not as simple as a “one size fits” all approach. We are constantly bombarded with marketing of “the next best vitamin supplement”, but how do we really know what our bodies need?
With over a decade of experience in the healthcare industry, Dr Tracey Smillie (MTech Hom(DUT), PGCE) is the mastermind behind our Nourish Yourself Well personalised supplement assessment. Her professional journey has enabled her to earn a master's degree in Natural Medicine (Homeopathy) with a specialization in nutraceuticals. She has gained experience through private practice, public health sectors, health shops, pharmacies and research.
Tracey keeps up to date with the latest evidence based research, following basic principles of health and uses her years of expertise and experience to guide you towards an accurate personal supplement plan.
A Nourish nutritional assessment is used as a tool to guide people as to their vitamin and mineral needs. A husband and wife will have different needs and therefore both taking the same multivitamin may not be suitable.
This ensures you are not wasting money on the wrong vitamins and missing out on essential ones.
The first step is to fill in the Nourish questionnaire, it should take around 15 – 20 minutes as most options involve drop down menus and check boxes.
Nutrition is vital in keeping our bodies functioning, the more optimal your nutrition, the more efficiently your body can function. This can reduce unwanted symptoms experienced and prevent certain illness.
Each person is assessed according to specific factors such as age, gender, lifestyle and chronic illness amongst others. These factors all have an impact on one’s specific nutritional needs and play an important role in guiding the healthcare professional to focus on specific nutrients needed.
First and foremost is consuming a broad varied diet containing good quality produce, where possible. Secondly, addressing one’s lifestyle choices such as consumption of coffee, alcohol and smoking. Thirdly, liquids and smoothies cannot be overlooked. Fourthly, calculating your personal protein need is important and finally, good nutrition can lead to prevention of health problems, which is always better than cure.
Nutrition has a direct effect on hormones. A small change can make a big difference, for example, by taking 0.035mg of progestin daily (such as in the minipill) it can prevent pregnancy. Such as a small hormonal shift can have such a significant impact on the body and it works the same for our vitamin and mineral levels.
Selenium is a mineral needed for making thyroid hormones, estrogen, and progesterone. A review of seven studies looking at selenium and female fertility concluded that selenium supplements could improve fertility, especially in women with low selenium levels indicating the relationship between minerals and hormones.
Almost everyone except for babies under a year.
Nutritional education leads to empowerment as people become more aware of their own needs and can therefore take better control of their health. Taking high dose vitamin B’s when it is not necessary can be detrimental to health in same way as not getting enough. Nutritional education needs to be continuous and filtered into areas where knowledgeable people can share healthcare advice.
Nutrient supplements have saved lives and have also been taken without any evidence of it being necessarily helpful. Therefore, assessments are important as it can give an indication whether the vitamin or mineral is possibly deficient or not.
Not all supplements are made equally in the same way as some are highly targeted effective supplements than others. One must always ask, “why am I taking this supplement?”, “do I really need it?” and “what am I trying to achieve?”. If a supplement is needed then it is also important to investigate quality, price and availability.
Most free assessments on the market work off a standard algorithm, you enter your information and answer a few questions and based on certain tagged responses a recommendation supplement plan is suggested. This limits the ability to truly be comprehensive and personal which you get via Nourish who use qualified healthcare professionals to manually assess your questionnaire.
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