The post where I blab about being a Nutritionist.

One of my favourite things about my job as a Nutritionist, is doing Vitamin and Mineral deficiency assessments.  It's just so cool.

It was my favourite part of my program to learn.  To be able to figure out what someone is likely deficient it, and why is just so interesting to me.

I fell in love with the fact that it's done through software, since bloodwork doesn't test for everything. It looks at what you are eating, any signs and symptoms you have, and compares the two against each other.   You then have to use your many hours of education to analyze the results and make recommendations.  I like seeing the trends though.   People with similar lifestyles tend to be deficient in the same things.

Stressed out, overworked people, need more Bs, Calcium and Magnesium usually.  Those are some of your biggest stress vitamins and minerals, so it makes sense, but seeing it on paper (or computer screen) just reinforces that.

I would say about 80% of people I see are deficient in Calcium, Magnesium or Potassium. Sometimes all 3!

Every time I analyze a teenager, I always wonder at their deficiencies.  It almost always contains at least one or two "weird" (or less common) minerals.   I think it's mostly because teenagers tend to eat a lot of the same things over and over again.  They know what they like... or more importantly, they know what they don't like.   I feel like a lot of adults will make some concessions to eat things that we don't necessarily like, but that we know are good for us.  (an adult will eat a tomato on a sandwich or burger, even if they don't like it, whereas a teenager or child wont let that tomato anywhere near their plate if they don't like them).

Some of it is the idea of the food too.  One of the boys I nanny for HATES, HATES, HATES tomatoes... but loves tomato sauce (pasta sauce, pizza sauce), or if it's chopped up inside of a quesadilla... pretty much he hates tomatoes... unless he doesn't know they are there.  I think it's more the idea of a tomato than the actual tomato (although he also hates ketchup so there's some consistency there. If you ask him if he wants ketchup, he looks at you as though you were offering him cyanide.)

I do vitamin and mineral deficiency assessments on myself every few months, because I change my eating habits every few months. It's always neat to see how my own needs fluctuate with the seasons.

I definitely recommend them to everyone.  It's important to make sure you are giving your body all the things it needs to be happy, and...


Stay Healthy.