By Bruce Karnick

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Odds are, each and every one of us struggles with something health wise. Be it fatigue, aches and pains, headaches, depression, anxiety, weight gain, brain fog, irritability, digestive problems and more. For many people, the way to fix health issues is to rely on pharmaceuticals prescribed by their doctor. This thought process is often referred to as “Western Medicine”. Western medicine has done amazing things, but more and more, people are becoming concerned with the artificial chemicals that are being used in these medicines and more importantly, they worry about side effects.

To be perfectly clear, modern medicine has saved the lives of countless people and helped even more live healthier lives, this writer included. The allure of a more natural remedy has always been there for many. Western medicine tends to focus on the symptoms, while the Eastern medicine thought process leans heavily toward the prevention side of things. Chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage have all made giant strides in acceptance in western culture, and they all have Eastern culture roots, much like things that are seeing a surge in popularity like essential oils and advanced organic supplements.

The holistic approach looks at your body’s needs big picture. The nutrition of what you eat, how what you eat affects you, along with balancing out the vitamins and minerals that you need on a daily basis.

Teresa Cover earned her Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine diploma from Trinity School of Natural Health. In Minnesota, that makes her a Certified Natural Health Practitioner.

“What I do is I look at people’s body balance and make adjustments that need to be made to make them better. Whether it’s for people who experience problems with the weight, with sugar, with inflammation, with pain, with joint stiffness. I look at the whole body, and we try to put it back together from there because there’s always an underlying issue and unlike allopathic medicine, they go on symptoms. [Symptoms] help us guide us, but treating the symptoms never gets to the root. So, we always look at getting to the root problem, and if you fix the root. Suddenly everything around it starts, fixing itself,” Explained Cover.

We used my medical history to discuss a variety of topics related to health and wellness. For general health and wellness, one big thing that was suggested was changing my multi-vitamin. Taking one of the big box store vitamins is better than nothing but taking a high-quality vitamin can dramatically change the absorption of those vitamins and minerals for your body. I picked up a bottle of the vitamins that Cover suggested for me and in a few days, I started to feel a bit more… well, for lack of a better term, balanced.

Add in a few other tips that she gave, such as eating a good protein for breakfast will keep your body feeling full for a much longer time during the day than loading with carbs. She’s right, it does, and water. Water should not have ingredients. Look at the water you are buying when you grab a bottle of water at the gas station. Does it have a list of ingredients? Shouldn’t that just read H2O?

Along with the ingredients in water, what about food? Cover tells us about that. “Let’s take your breakfast, that you make and make the very same breakfast with organic food and it’s going to be different too. Here is what most people won’t tell you. This is why the diet industry is so huge. billion dollars a year, well over. And this is why I don’t like the word diet and I don’t like calorie intake because it’s so misleading, is that for every chemical, you put in your body, it needs a fat cell to hang on to. That’s how it stays in your body. Most people don’t understand the food that you’re eating has so many chemicals in it, and, and it’s processed to beyond a point, one, it doesn’t offer much nutrition and two, it’s offering extra toxins and free radicals that are interacting and making your body do weird things. So, if you take in tons of chemicals and unbeknownst to you if you if you took all your food and switched it, you would just start dropping weight.”

A huge thing with the processing of foods is the amount of sugar in what we eat now compared to the early 1900’s. In the early 1900’s, each person would consume roughly five pounds of sugar a year, five years ago, that figure was up over 130 pounds of sugar a year, now, it is up to 255 pounds. That could be a significant reason behind the increase in many diseases that we face today.

The three-hour conversation covered the minutia of a lot of the above. How to balance some aspects of my dietary intake, the supplements I am taking along with the medicine I am taking daily. What questions to ask my doctor before I start working with her on a more holistic approach to my health. It was time well spent. Cover has also followed up with me a few times since we initially spoke two weeks ago. A personal touch that is important in making changes for the better. The extra support means the world when you are making difficult choices. I felt very comfortable with her knowledge and her true desire to help me feel better. She was very welcoming, and I look forward to working with her on leading a healthier lifestyle.

Cover also has products for both children and your pets. Pets can be forgotten in the holistic health approach, and she has that aspect covered for you!

Teresea Cover owns Earths Natural Defense located in the office building at 1303 S. Frontage Road suite 193. She would love to be your health coach. Give her a call at 651438-9355 or look her up online www.earthsnaturaldefense. com

Teresea Cover of Earths Natural Defense in her office in Hastings. Photo by Bruce Karnick

Earths Natural Defense carries a variety of suppliments and essential oils to help with a variety of ailments. Photo by Bruce Karnick