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Confessions of a cereal killer

by MONICA EGGLESTON/Lakeside Holistic Health
| August 6, 2014 9:00 PM

I can still picture the old shower curtain that used to hang in the downstairs bathroom where I spent hours doubled over with stomach cramps after basketball and track practices in high school. Two pink columns, three turquoise, black and white squiggles, repeat. My parents took me to a few doctors, and I was prescribed some different medications that didn't help.

No one ever asked me about my diet, and I was pretty thin and energetic; I figured it didn't really matter what I ate. So I ate a big bowl of cereal and milk sprinkled with white powdered donuts for breakfast, a "pizza pocket" from the gas station convenience store across the street from school for lunch, and whatever my mom made (unless it was green) for dinner. No one ever figured out the cause of my stomach aches. I finally resorted to self-medicating with Ritz crackers before games and practices because I thought the pain might just be hunger pains gone wild. Well, they just got wilder...

Fast forward to college, where I thought my diet had taken a big leap forward because I ate salad (covered in processed salad dressing) a few times per week. But I still didn't have any concept of real nutrition. A "health nut" friend of mine pointed out to me one day at lunch that my meal of a giant slice of white "French bread" and a bowl of grape jelly wasn't good for me: it wasn't really food. I was taken aback. It was fat free after all, and lots of other girls ate that same meal...with Yocream (chemical laden, fat-free, high sugar ice cream alternative) for dessert. My stomach aches had mostly gone away at that time, with new problems in their place: problems I still didn't connect to my largely "food-free" diet.

When I was experiencing another chronic and frustrating health problem in graduate school, I finally found a practitioner who not only helped me to completely resolve my problem, she taught me two of the most important principles that I carry with me today into every encounter with a patient: 1. Food is medicine 2. Every individual is unique, and there is therefore no one right diet for everyone. (Oh...and 3. Kill the cereal.)

The science and health communities are learning more every day about our individual uniqueness through epigenetics: the way that the environment (especially food) influences each person's unique genes. The food you eat, bad or good, is washing over your genes. It is damaging or fortifying your gut, your brain, your immune system and your wonderful cellular energy centers, the mitochondria.

Food is information. Food is medicine. Food is amazing - and so is your one, unique, wise body that communicates with you by how you feel and function. But even as genetic expression is beautifully complex, a core truth about health is beautifully simple: you have to eat well to be well.

Monica Eggleston, FNP-C, is a board certified family nurse practitioner with eight years of experience working in busy health care practices, treating patients of all ages for acute and chronic conditions. Her passion is being a partner with patients in seeking and addressing the underlying causes of illness and helping people realize their optimal health. She also has training in functional medicine, and is currently pursuing certification in that field through the Institute for Functional Medicine. She is very excited to be joining Lakeside Holistic Health in September.

Please visit our website at www.lakesideholistic.com or call us at (208) 758-0568 for more information or to schedule an appointment.