The Beginning of My Herbalism Journey as a Holistic Dietitian - Part I

Food as medicine is the entire logos on which I became a dietitian in the first place. Realizing that the foods that we traditionally feed our bodies as Americans is what made me go from being a "traditional" dietitian to a "holistic" dietitian. 

I recently have gotten into herbalism after going through a professional training for interpreting the Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis test (HTMA). Now that I am an HTMA-Professional, I have been able to see what a huge difference minerals make in a person's health. Minerals are our body's spark plugs. They set the "spark" that ignites all sorts of cellular processes in the body. 

Most humans that live in developed societies (as in the United State or other similar countries) have diets that are extremely low vitamins and minerals. Most women in developed countries have 30-50% of the mineral content in their bodies that they actually need. Meaning, that they need 1.5-2 times the amount of minerals in their diet that they are actually getting. Vitamins are even worse! Women usually need 5 times more than the amount of fat soluble vitamins in their diet than what they are getting (Vitamins A, D, E, & K). But... minerals enable us to metabolize vitamins and to digest and break down foods in order to absorb vitamins in the first place. 

For women, the vitamin and mineral content in your foods is of the utmost importance. Because women are delicate and we are predisposition to have higher stress responses and higher hormonal imbalances. Our stress response makes our digestion, absorption, and utilization of nutrients less efficient. We need more nutrient density, always. Nutrient density is how high the concentration of high amounts of vitamins and minerals in foods that we eat are. 

Herbs are some of the most nutrient dense foods in the entire world, next to organ meats. When going through my HTMA training, I was looking into foods that could be most beneficial to my clients, focusing on my niche/audience (which is women who are in their most fertile years and need hormone support). Herbs are medicinal. They are not alternative medicine, they are the original. Herbs, both wild and home-grown, have been used since the dawn of time as medicine for different ailments. 

Naturally, knowing this would lead me to use herbs more. I started making herbal teas as home for myself, particularly for liver health, and I also started recommending herbal-based solutions for my clients. Herbal teas, infusions, tinctures, and even some capsulated herbs. Herbals are highly effective, natural, without drawbacks, and also are an economical solution for most people who cannot afford to spend hundreds of dollars each month on supplementation (that isn't even high quality at that). 

My herbal journey started with me taking 2 courses on herbalism. One was a kitchen-based medicinal course on how to use every day household herbs as medicine for your family. Things like cinnamon, onions, garlic, wild honey, ginger, chamomile, etc. The second course was on Wild Herbs with Wild Herb Academy. This course helps you to forage herbs that are meant to be used for women and hormones in particular. The woman luckily also lives in the Southeastern United States, so I was fortunate to feel as though this course was very useful for me. I also happened to find an edible plant handbook in an old rent house of mine. And that is where my journey starts... 

I have been foraging and starting to wake up to the diversity of plants around me. It is luckily spring and the perfect time to begin seeing new plants arrive into my surroundings. It is also the time of year when our bodies naturally want to use these plants as medicine to detoxify from things that have kept our bodies down during the winter. 

Ancestrally speaking, most women of indigenous countries have a diverse diet that is not only seasonal but also nutrient-dense. And that is exactly what herbalism provides us with. Stay tuned for my next blog post that goes over all of the benefits that I have learned about in my wild herbal course.