Frequently asked questions
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What is a Nutritional Therapy practitioner (NTP)?
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A Nutritional Therapy Practitioner™ (NTP) is a paraprofessional certified by the Nutritional Therapy Association, Inc.®, trained to evaluate a client's nutritional needs, support normal function, and identify nutritional deficiencies.
An NTP is not trained to provide medical diagnosis, to prescribe or treat any medical or pathological condition, illness, injury or disease, and is not a replacement for a medical doctor.
Rather, NTPs direct their clients on a path of discovery to the underlying issues affecting their health, empowering them with knowledge and showing them how to make the changes themselves. They are trained to work alongside licensed practitioners to support a doctor's diagnosis and other therapies.
An NTP makes recommendations about dietary changes, lifestyle considerations and nutritional supplementation based on a systematic, functional approach.
Using non-invasive evaluative techniques, the intention is to identify what will nourish the body and help it to find equilibrium.
What should I expect in a Nutritional Consultation?
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First, your Nutritional Therapy Practitioner will ask you to fill out some fact-finding paperwork:
a). A Disclaimer.
b). An initial interview form with general questions.
This paperwork is used in the first session with your NTP, where they will ask you in-depth questions about your history. Did you grow up near farms where pesticides were being sprayed? What kind of birth did you have? Did you have colic as a baby? These are all topics an NTP will cover in order to get to the roots of your health issues.
You may never have experienced being with someone this interested in the intricate details of your overall health, but that's what NTPs do. They collect facts like a forensic scientist and use them to solve a crime – in this case, the depletion of your vitality.
After the fact-finding mission is complete, during follow up consultations, an NTP might recommend you to complete a questionnaire or right down a food diary.
We are also trained to take your blood pressure and palpating reflex points to assist with our physical assessment.
The aim is to understand which organs are under-functioning and contributing to your body's overall dysfunction, never to hurt you. Your NTP will encourage open communication at all times to ensure you are comfortable. If you are not comfortable with this part of the process, your NTP can simply just work with the information they have collected from the forms and initial interview and make general recommendations.
We might do Lingual Neural Testing.
Using the results of the fact-finding and the initial examination, your NTP will test several nutrients that you may wish to consider to assist your body's recovery. He or she will do this by asking you to place a small sample of a nutrient in your mouth. When the message from the nerve endings on your tongue (your taste buds) has traveled to your brain and out to your external nerve endings (around 15-30 seconds), they will re-test the reflex points that were most sensitive.
You will be amazed at how the tenderness rating will change when your body senses the right nutrient to help it heal. That's what we mean about the "body's innate intelligence" – we are incredibly complex organisms with the ability to heal ourselves if only given the chance.
Your NTP will then make their recommendations (either in the same session or the next) and help you to understand the reasons for those suggestions. In understanding why you might need to make them, you will be far more committed to the process and will move closer to your health goals with each session.
Working with an NTP is an ongoing process, with visits anywhere from 2 weeks to 8 weeks apart, depending on where you are in your health journey.
Our aim is to work ourselves out of a job and get you self-sufficient within a minimum time frame. However, some people choose to stay with their NTP on an ongoing basis to keep themselves fine-tuned and in top shape!
We believe that everyone is different, both Muscle testing and Lingual Neural testing are greats tools to identify if a supplement is working for you or not. I see so many practitioners prescribing the same supplements for everyone and others taking the same supplement for too long. Providing a supplement that is not right for your body chemistry can actually harm.
What do I bring during a consultation?
Sometimes we might require you to bring your own supplements in order to test them against your body or to check the quality source of ingredients listed in the supplements. So many people are taking the same supplements for years and they are not aware that this is not necessary and also that it is not good for them. Also many supplements are synthetic and as an NTP, we focus on quality and rich nutrient value, so we might recommend you to switch to a better quality one or to something that is more suitable for you.
What should I wear during a Functional Evaluation?
When we perform a Functional and/or Muscle testing, you are not required to take any clothes off. It is recommended to wear stretchy and light clothing like yoga wear in order to access body points easily and also to allow free body movement. Avoid all types of clothing like jeans, heavy wire bras and buttons.
Do I have to completely change my diet?
Changing your diet is what is going to make the difference in your healing journey, but you don’t have to jump in the blue straight away. As an NTP, we take in consideration that it might take time for some people to adjust their diet or lifestyle. We always try to work together to find what is the best option for each individual.
Why is happening if I decide not to take any supplements and work only with my diet?
People can still heal without supplementing but it can take longer and the diet might need to be stricter. Taking therapeutic doses of good quality supplements really helps accelerating the process of healing. The best part is that once the body heals, supplementation can be reduced and/or event stopped completely except for some people who have a specific genetic condition or long term health issues. Often people have gut imbalance which require taking antimicrobial and specific probiotics in order to rebalance the gut microbiota.
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What do I do and bring for a sauna session?
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Ensure that you are well hydrated before a sauna session. If you have any major health issues, please contact me or seek advice from your medical doctor to ensure that a sauna session will be adequate for you. Bring a water bottle with you and 2 clean bath towels. Ensure that you can wear comfortable clothing afterwards and on cold days, bring warm clothingas after a sauna session you might feel the chill.
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What do remedial differ from regular massage?
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As a Remedial Massage Therapist, after making you filling out a client history form, we proceed on a physical assessment which include; checking on your posture and doing specific test to find out what could be the root cause of your pain. Then we provide a treatment that correlates to your conditions. We might recommend basic stretches and exercises or ask you to increase your water intake. We also can refer you to another practitioner if we feel that other support is necessary.
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For any other questions, don't hesitate to contact me.