Khloe Beaird wants to revamp your kitchen cabinets and your dinner table. She’s not a home renovator, though — she’s a health coach who wants to redesign your family’s approach to healthy and tasty eating.
Beaird, of Moline, is a certified health coach who helps clients improve their gut health at Mandala Integrative Medicine in Davenport. She also owns Teat to Table, a website that helps families feed picky eaters and achieve the sometimes elusive goal of finding healthy food that tastes good, too.
Integrative health really gets to a root cause of an issue, Beaird says. This may mean looking beyond a person's diet and exercise, she says, and examining how a person's relationships, finances, employment, relaxation and sleep impact their health.
At Mandala, an eight-part circle of wellness is considered. “If all of those things are not in balance, then we are not living to our true potential,” she says. “And with functional medicine instead of just treating symptoms, we try to get to the root cause of someone’s health issues.”
Beaird says her and her oldest daughters health struggles led her to make a career change and commit her time to improving the health and lives of others. Since leaving her teaching career in Geneseo, Beaird has logged more than 500 hours coaching others in a clinical setting. Beaird has a bachelor’s degree in physical education, a master’s degree in educational leadership, and a health-coaching certification through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
“Growing up, I had some health issues. I have asthma, a lot of allergies, swollen glands and recurring infections all the way through my 20s,” Beaird says. “No doctor could really put their finger on what was going on with me, just treating it with antibiotics. It really started to screw up my gut microbiome.”
Healthline, a consumer health information site, says gut microbiome is made up of all the microbes in your intestines, which act as another organ that is crucial to one’s health. A 2017 article on the site states that there are up to 1,000 species of bacteria in the human gut microbiome, each of which plays a different role in the body.
Beaird says her eldest daughter had chronic ear infections that started a repeat process of getting sick, visiting the doctor and antibiotics. After taking the meds, she says, she would feel unwell again in a month and they would return to the doctor.
“I decided I was going to do something different,” Beaird says.
For her own health issues, she says, she thought celiac disease likely was a culprit due to family history. She says a local doctor wrote her a prescription and sent her on her way, but she decided she was not going to fix her problem with prescription drugs. Instead, she transitioned to a gluten-free and then dairy-free diet, and significantly felt better after doing so. That led her to start learning about integrative medicine and the power of healing herself, which led her to go back to school. After six months of schooling, she got an internship at Mandala and later was offered a job at the clinic to work with Dr. Sayed Shah.
“I just fell in love with what they are doing here,” she says. “They are really willing to help people.”
She says Shah sits down with patients to find out what is going on, and then directs them toward a change, likely away from the standard American diet and to some kind of elimination diet, be that dairy, sugar or gluten, or an anti-inflammatory diet.
Beaird says dairy sometimes can cause inflammation in the body, or make it difficult for kids to go to the bathroom. She says almond milk, cashew milk or coconut milk are good alternatives. Coconut ice cream and dairy-free cashew cheese also can be found in stores.
“We really need families to get back in the kitchen and start making their own foods,” she says. “It’s a process. Some people can go in the kitchen and make cashew cheese on their own. ... We try to meet people where they are.”
Beaird is hoping to do just that with her “Healthy Family Meal Plan.” The four-part service begins with a discussion to determine what you might want to change, as well as a look through your cupboards to remove foods that are toxic or may be causing inflammation. Then, Beaird helps to create grocery lists with better-for-you items, and offers information about how to read nutrition labels. The plan also includes a session on meal planning to make life easier, and healthy snacks and substitutions. That final step includes a taste test and tips and tricks for picky eaters, including how to find healthier versions of popular snacks such as granola bars, chips or applesauce.
Currently, the plan is offered through Mandala at a special half-off rate of $100. Those who are interested may call Mandala, at 563-355-7411, before Feb. 1 to schedule the four, 60-minute sessions.
Beaird says all sessions are optional and can be customized to a client’s need. She says some people might not feel comfortable with someone else going through their cupboards, so she instead can give a list of recommended foods in the office. She says the goal is not to make anyone feel bad, but to guide people toward better options.
“They choose where and when, and we get to the bottom of what they want to change,” she says.
Above all, Beaird says she wants families to know that they do not have to resign themselves to living with health issues they may think are hereditary, or “just the way my body works.” She urges people never to settle with uncomfortable symptoms or accept that they are a part of life.
“Food changes everything,” she says. “Every cell of our bodies.”
Beaird offers many resources to families at her Teat to Table website, which she says can help families get more plants into their diets, help with meal planning and grocery shopping. Beaird says there are a lot of substitutions out there that can improve the nutrition of a meal, yet still make it something a family wants to dig into.
“We want our kids to have a nice dinner,” she says. “We want them to enjoy what they are eating.”
http://qconline.com/radish/balancing-health-moline-woman-helps-people-discover-root-causes-of/article_257f0bc8-2de6-5bc9-8a09-49cac606ca51.htmlBagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Balancing health: Moline woman helps people discover root causes of illness"
Post a Comment