Years ago I trained with an internal medicine physician in Seattle. He had a practice where he cared for a lot of patients with complicated musculoskeletal issues and autoimmune diseases. One of the things he taught me as a physical therapist was to pay close attention to what patients were eating and drinking in order to obtain optimal healing. He was convinced that when normal healing was not happening in a timely fashion, it ultimately had something to do with their food and drink intake. He was so convinced of it that he would have special time frames that he would meet his patients at Whole Foods and teach them how to shop for good foods and then how to combine the foods for optimal healing and overall health. His patients then experienced amazing results when they began to eat for their health.

Well at that time we had no way to know exactly what their nutritional health was, but now we do. With the Nutritional Biophotonic Marker from Pharmanex, it is able to scan the carotenoids in your skin to determine the level of antioxidants that you have. Current medical literature indicates that antioxidants can decrease your risk and slow the progression of cataracts, macular degeneration, dementia, cancer, heart disease and the complications of diabetes, etc. Antioxidants have also been shown to improve our immune system health, speed recovery times while decreasing pain and inflammation and slow down the aging process. Remember antioxidants are derived from the fruit and vegetables you eat on a daily basis. You should have 7-9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day to protect your body, and if you aren't able to eat enough servings then you need to have supplements to help you with this. Sometimes you may actually have trouble with absorption of what you are eating, so that might mean your gastrointestinal tract (GI) needs a little extra help. Probiotics then may be needed to help you actually get the nutrition out of the foods you are eating. In some recent research they have seen that a lot of autoimmune diseases, along with diabetes, actually are associated with problems in the GI tract.

At Lake City Physical Therapy we are now using the Pharmanex Biophotonic Scanner that was featured on the Dr. Oz show. The scanner has a colored coded mechanism that shows your nutritional levels through the use of latest technology just by placing your hand on the machine for 90 seconds. That is all it takes, 90 seconds, to see if you are as healthy on the inside as you think. Then if you are not, there are easy steps to take to improve your intake to live at the optimal levels. After you do the interventions, such as increasing your servings of fruits and vegetables and/or adding supplements, etc, you can re-test to see if what you are doing is working for you or not. This is a fabulous tool to test you before a surgical intervention to see how well you will heal post-operatively, or a great way to see if that diet you are on is actually a safe diet for you. It is a tool to show us if you are at high risk you for multiple disease processes. It you are below 40,000 when you are tested you could be at risk for chronic health issues, such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, etc. The test is $20 and the information you receive is so valuable to your overall health because you will now be able to see whether your lifestyle eating habits are what they should be so you can be well.

Sheree DiBiase, PT, is the owner of Lake City Physical Therapy and she and her staff can be reached in Cd'A at (208) 667-1988 and in our Spokane Valley office at (509) 891-2623. We want you to be well so call and schedule a scan so you can know how your present lifestyle is working for you and what you need to do to bring it up to the optimal level.