What can nutrition do for you?

April 30, 2025

What can nutrition do for you?

It can be easy to think that changing what you eat won’t make too much difference to your overall health goals. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that what you eat today can make a dramatic difference to how you feel now, as well as how you function in the future. Here I’ll explore the wide-ranging effects that good nutrition can have across multiple areas of your health and well-being.

Why is nutrition essential for life?

You might consider food to be fuel – a source of energy to enable your body to think, move, and grow. And while this is true – food does provide you with key macronutrients required for muscle growth, energy metabolism, and cognition, it also offers us so much more.

On a short-term basis, what we eat can affect how well we can concentrate at work, how far we can run in the gym, and how likely we are to catch the common cold that’s going around. But on a longer-term basis, our regular eating patterns can influence our testosterone or progesterone levels, our risk of cognitive decline, how likely we are to become chronically ill, and much much more.

Take something as simple as your Vitamin D status. Yes, Vitamin D is essential for skeletal health and bone strength, but did you know that this key vitamin has been linked to everything from endometriosis to energy metabolism. Having low Vitamin D stores can put you at an elevated risk of autoimmunity, whereas having good Vitamin D levels can reduce your risk of a harmful cytokine storm during a coronavirus infection. And this is just scratching the surface of one individual Vitamin.

In short, your nutritional status can affect how your hormones function, which genes are switched on or off (enter the fascinating world of epigenetics), how well your gut interacts with your brain, whether you produce enough feel-good neurotransmitters, the list goes on.

In fact, nutrition is so essential that it impacts you from the moment of conception in your mother’s womb, to the point of death, as nutrition will influence both your health span and your longevity.

Your mother’s nutritional status influences how likely you are to be born with ADHD, anxiety, or asthma. And, it even affects your IQ as a teenager. Once you are in charge of your own nutritional intake, the decisions you make will influence whether your genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease manifests, as well as how vibrant you feel on a daily basis.

So, it really is hard to overstate just how essential good nutrition is for both your quality and length of life.

What is good nutrition?

It can be really confusing to know what is meant by good nutrition. After all, we are constantly bombarded by the latest fad diets, superfoods, and contradictory health claims. One day we are told to avoid cholesterol, and the next – eggs are back on the menu.

So, why is it so hard to figure out what to eat? Well, unfortunately, nutritional science is a complex and nuanced field, with constantly emerging and sometimes conflicting evidence. Most nutritional data is also observational which means scientists have to find associations or connections rather than direct causes.

And, there are so many confounding factors in studies too, such as people misremembering what they ate, being unable to stick to strict diets, being on certain medications, as well as the impact of other lifestyle factors such as smoking, exercise levels, and alcohol intake.

Much of our nutritional recommendations come from poor science which has more recently been debunked. For example, we were told that fat is bad and will cause cardiovascular disease. So people started consuming lots of carbs instead and then became ill with metabolic diseases and obesity.

The reality is that many types of healthy fats are essential for health, and cholesterol is required for everything from our cell membrane formation to our hormone production. But this doesn’t mean carbs are the energy – whole grains and complex carbs can be very healthful in the right circumstances.

And then we come to the whole vegan vs carnivore issue. Such a contentious conversation topic, but as with most nutrition topics, the answer isn’t found in the extremes – a more nuanced, happy middle ground tends to suit most people. Whilst some individuals do fine on an appropriately supplemented vegan diet, others thrive with a well-balanced plant-heavy diet that also includes nutrient-dense animal products and omega-3-rich fish.

Whilst we don’t have all the answers, what we do know is that overall dietary patterns are more important than individual food choices. And we also know that the Mediterranean diet comes top again and again, whether we are examining heart health, cognitive decline, or chronic disease risk.

Most people agree that ultra-processed foods aren’t helpful when consumed to excess, and there’s great data from the blue zones (international longevity hot spots) to show that locally grown, seasonal produce has a lot going for it.

But, we also know that many people in the Western world are deficient in core nutrients, suffering from poor gut health (resulting from antibiotic overuse or fiber-depleted diets), and juggling multiple chronic health concerns.

So, lots of us can benefit from a food-first approach, with appropriate and tailored supplementation to suit our specific needs

Nutrition and health

So, where to start? Well, it’s always good to think about what you personally can control. Whilst you can’t directly influence the obesogenic environment we live in, nor the depleted soil quality our vegetables currently grow in – there is so much you can control.

It can be overwhelming to think about overhauling your entire diet, but the chances are you’ve already got the foundations right and you might just need to make a few tweaks to optimise things. Below are a few key areas of focus to get you started.

1) Gut health

Surprise surprise, gut health tops the list. The reason for this is when you improve your gut health, you enhance your general health, making it a good place to start. Small changes can add up where your gut health is concerned. You can start by making time to chew your food properly, in a relaxed mindful environment (hint, not while scrolling stressful newsreels). Then, aim to widen out the diversity of plant-based fibers you consume. Because a diverse microbiome is a healthy one. Aim for around 30 different plant-based foods a week, including a wide range of nuts, seeds, spices, herbs, veggies and fruits. You can also slowly start to incorporate a range of fermented foods to help repopulate your gut with beneficial bugs. Experiment with kimchi, kombucha, miso, and more. And remember, load up on prebiotics too as these provide the fuel for your precious gut bugs -think green bananas, onions, garlic, and oats.

2) Blood sugar control

Do you find yourself reaching for a mid-morning biscuit, or feeling hangry more often than you’d like? Chances are, like most people, you’re on a blood sugar rollercoaster. Many of us grab quick-release carbs for breakfast and lunch, leading to inevitable blood sugar lows a short time later. Not only does this make us feel grouchy on a short-term basis, but it also tends to promote metabolic dysfunction over time, and can even lead to insulin resistance and diabetes type two. The answer is to switch to low glycaemic complex carbs such as oats, brown rice, and sourdough bread, and to always pair your carbs with a source of healthy proteins and fat. This ensures you remain on an even keel and prevents the risk of future ill health.

3) Correct deficiencies

Even if you eat what you consider to be a healthy, well-balanced diet, the chances are you’re not at optimal levels of all vitamins and minerals. This can be for a number of reasons. For example, you might have malabsorption issues due to gut health problems which prevents you from getting all the goodness from your food. Or, you might take stomach acid-suppressing medication, which can reduce your ability to digest certain nutrients. You might also have heavy periods which means your need for iron increases, or you may be under chronic stress which zaps your magnesium stores. So, it pays to be aware of your own nutritional needs, which may require supplementation in some instances.

4) Increase phytonutrient intake

Whilst we want to focus on getting the right macronutrient and micronutrient intakes, we also want to look to optimize and future-proof our health through increased phytonutrient intake. Phytonutrients are compounds within plants that have evidence-based potential for human health. These special compounds can reduce your risk of heart disease, cognitive decline, chronic inflammation, cancer, and much more. You can find phytonutrients in the following foods :
● Green tea
● Berries
● Red wine
● Turmeric
● Dark chocolate
● Garlic
● Dark green leafy veg
● Olive oil

5) Manage specific health concerns

If you already have a chronic condition or ongoing health concern, the good news is that by tailoring your diet you may be able to reduce the impact of this health issue on your quality of life. For example, if you have arthritis, an anti-inflammatory diet may help to reduce swelling and discomfort. If you have endometriosis, studies show that eliminating gluten can reduce pain in 75% of women. And, if you struggle with common gut health problems such as IBS, the chances are that a course of probiotics may reduce symptoms of gas and bloating. So, when it comes to your health, food really can be medicine.

I hope you can now see that nutrition has an amazing potential to prevent conditions, improve your ability to feel well day to day, and future-proof you against age-related decline too. Whilst it can feel a bit overwhelming to begin with, there are some super simple changes you can make today, that will help you to feel better tomorrow.

References

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