Nutritional & lifestyle counseling focuses on optimizing an individual’s existing dietary and lifestyle habits to achieve optimal health. Laboratory diagnostic interpretations from your primary care physician serve as a tool to guide recommendations, which are selected and personalized for each individual based on principles of Holistic Nutrition and informed by the latest research available on the effects of diet and nutrition. Holistic Nutrition emphasizes the use of whole foods to achieve the proper balance of macro- and micro-nutrients. Patients’ constitution and other environmental influences such as climate, season, and lifestyle are taken into account to customize an achievable diet and meal plan targeted to their specific needs and health goals. Supplementation may be recommended and will likely include certain nutraceuticals: reputable medicinal foods and nutritional vitamins and minerals that are used as part of an optimum health program to support the immune system, boost overall health, and facilitate healing from illness or disease. For example, nutraceuticals prescribed as part of a patient’s detoxification program may include plant-based protein powders, greens, and digestive enzymes. The Chinese Medicine diet is based on energetic principles to encourage balance, clean burning digestion, and a well-functioning body, free of diseases and full of energy. In Chinese Medicine training, we learn how to restore balance in your body when it has become imbalanced and is now manifesting pain or disease. Chinese Medicine can use needles or herbs to achieve this balance, but also includes a wide range of tools such as qi gong, tai chi, and dietary therapy. While these methods can heal disease by fixing imbalances, the main key is preventing your body to become imbalanced to begin with. From a traditional Chinese energetic perspective, eating a small amount of meat once per a day was seen as beneficial. Even Tibetan Buddhist monks, who believe in the sanctity of all living creatures, would eat meat occasionally in order to sustain the warmth against the harsh Himalayan winters. Most people have busy lives with demanding schedules, and need the energy and nutrition that protein in meat provides. For vegetarians, there are alternative choices in obtaining protein through various foods that produce good energy and have a healthy nutritional balance. It is possible to obtain adequate nutrition as a vegetarian. Although most individuals in our society are not vegetarians, many people in their attempt to reduce or eliminate meat from their diet actually end up eating an excess of dairy products in the form of yogurt, cheese and milk.