Happy New Year, Bethany,I hope you had a fun holiday season and have had a good start to 2024. Personally, 2023 was a challenging year in many ways. Things could certainly have been a lot worse, and many things could have been better, or at least different. In any event, 2023 is behind us and I’m looking forward to a fresh start in 2024, welcoming a new addition this spring, and officially becoming a Master Nutrition Therapist later this year. In light of this being the first newsletter of the new year, I wanted to share one of my major revelations from 2023, as well as where Sustainable Nutrition is headed this year. I promise to get back to much shorter newsletters next week 😉. One of our challenges as a family in 2023 was learning that our son has a neurodevelopment disorder, called Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). While I’m still wrapping my head around it and learning about what this means for him, and us, it also came as a major relief. For his entire five years on this planet, I have known in my gut something was different. I have fought and fought for answers on things I knew weren’t quite right. I’ve been brushed off by pediatricians, urgent care and ER doctors, behavioral therapists, RDs, GIs, and others. Call it mother’s intuition or maybe it’s just arrogance, but I knew deep down these doctors and medical professionals not only weren’t listening to me, they just didn’t know the answers to the questions I was asking. So I kept advocating, found new doctors, and I can happily say we finally have a care team of curious and supportive members who are helping us navigate this new world that we’re now a part of. We have three new specialists lined up this winter and I’m genuinely excited to see how they fit into the mix. I’m sharing all of this not to brag in some way, but instead as inspiration to advocate for yourself and your family as we enter into this new year. I truly believe most doctors aim to do no harm, but they also don’t know you or your child(ren) as well as you do, so it’s okay to push back and ask questions. In my opinion, any doctor worth their salt should welcome questions and not be offended by them. It has also become astonishingly clear that most Western doctors are not trained in nutrition or holistic health. They are quick to turn to medication, which in some instances is warranted (trust me, I am grateful every day to live in a time where we have life-saving medications readily available). However, there are lots of other instances where alternative options could, and should, be explored first, or at least in conjunction with medication. As you can probably imagine, this diagnosis has changed the trajectory of many things for us, including my own work and where I want to take my practice as a whole. Digestive health has always been an interest of mine, but these last few months especially have really opened my eyes to the importance of a healthy & functioning GI system. As my husband told me a few nights ago, “gut health is your love language.” 😘 So as we venture into this new year, and as I begin to hone in on my niche & focus area(s), you can expect less random nutrition & wellness information and more targeted information on digestive function and inflammation. As Hippocrates said about 2,500 years ago, “all disease begins in the gut.” And boy, was he right. Stay well,
Bethany
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