Natural Nutrition Diploma

Hi Foodies:

On Wednesday, May 14, 2008 (an historic day for me), I went to visit CSNN in Vancouver. CSNN stands for Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. Their tag line is “Teaching the medicine of the future.” I met with Judith Rimes, RHN (Registered Holistic Nutritionist), and she explained about the excellent two-day-per-week one-year diploma program they offer in Natural Nutrition. I’ve decided that, to back up the expertise available at Savings, Naturally, I’m going to take that one-year course to become an RHN (a Registered Holistic Nutritionist), starting on March 2, 2009.

As I’m a keener and can hardly wait to start, I bought the textbook for the first two courses in that diploma program: Staying Healthy with Nutrition by Elson M. Haas, MD with Buck Levin, PhD, RD, (c) 2006. And of course, I started to read, right from the beginning of this 927-page tome.

In his introduction, Dr. Haas talks about why he has focussed his attention and his medical practice on nutritional medicine for the last two decades. His whole premise is that our diet is directly linked to our health and our disease state. I wholeheartedly agree.

The first chapter is all about water – tap water, springwater, well water, mineral water, and filtered water. It makes me want to get our tap water tested. I’ll check into that with the City of Vancouver. If we were to filter our water, we might want to go with either the solid carbon block filter or the reserve osmosis technologies.

But the big thing for me is about how much water each of us should be drinking every day. We’ve all heard about how we should be drinking 8 glasses or 12 glasses or some other number. I always wonder how large these glasses are.

In our family, we drink water in some lovely glasses bought in Mexico. I’ve just filled one of them up with water and then measured how much that is in a measuring jug – it’s 0.5 litre or 2 cups or 0.5 quart. So, if I were to drink 8 x 0.5 litre glasses a day, that would be a heck of a lot of water!

Dr. Haas says, “The average human requirement is about 3 quarts of water per day, including food and beverages.” He says that, if we’re eating a healthy diet with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, then we’ll consume about 1 quart to 1.5 quarts in the food we eat. So that means we still need to drink 1.5 quarts to 2 quarts a day in water (not coffee, colas, sodas, or alcohol as all of those drinks actually dehydrate our bodies!). He doesn’t say it, but herbal teas are just as good as water.

Okay, so I just need to drink between 3 and 4 of my Mexican glasses full each day and I’m all set. Good news.

Just drinking some water,

Best of health, naturally,
Nina

Nina will be taking a one-year natural nutrition diploma to be an RHN at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, starting in March 2009. She will be blogging her experience.