Lack of essential nutrition that helps your muscles and nervous system to work properly is one of the main reason that I find my chiropractic patients are not making a good recovery

Keeping in mind that everyone is an individual and this may not apply to you the most common nutrients that are related to the issues that I see in my chiropractic clinic are Calcium, Magnesium, Vit D3, Omega 3, B12 and Iron. Often getting the correct supplement is all that is needed to restore the correct balance and reduce the pain and discomfort that patients are feeling.

But sometimes you need to do more.

Actually in terms of making positive changes with regards to nutrition you are always better off to remove foods (nutrition) that are causing problems. This is simply because when you do, you still have to eat so if you are not allowing yourself the “bad stuff” you have to replace it with something “good”.

So what are the foods that are most detrimental to your health. The biggest culprit is SUGAR in all its forms. The high sugar items that are present in our diet are numerous and in all sorts of food where you would not expect to find them. Food manufacturers are adding Sugar to all sorts of foods, especially Low Fat options and even savoury foods. Have a look at the back of a pack of crisps next time you are having a pack. You may or may not find the sugar in the ingredients and that is because there are currently about 60 different names being used for sugar. In the case of crisp they of use milk powder which has lactose in it a form of sugar.

As a quick rule of thumb is an ingredient is ending in –OSE or –TRIN i.e MalTOSE or dexTRIN is a sugar. Another common name will be syrup i.e. corn syrup or rice syrup, again also a sugar.

The other common misconception I hear is that fruit doesn’t count because it is natural. That is not true – the fruit form of sugar is called fructose. It is just as bad for you in excess. There are other things in fruit that are good for you but you need to make sure that you are not taking so much that you are giving yourself a sugar overload.

Nutrition is a hugely complex subject and the more you get into it you realise just how complicated but on a practical level it is pretty simply – stop eating the foods that are bad for you & eat more of what is good for you. This will give your body the nutrients it needs to function properly. As a general rule everyone will benefit from a diet high in good fats, low in sugar and simple carbohydrates and dense in nutrients.