Carina's campaign to tackle childhood obesity
A COUNTY Mayo naturopath, herbalist and nutritional therapist is leading a campaign to get children to give the chop to processed foods in favour of a healthy eating diet, writes Tom Gillespie.
Carina Kennedy, whose roots are in Breaffy, is about to launch online courses for teachers so they in turn can introduce good eating guidelines in the classroom.
The Essex-born former nurse operates It’s A Natural Choice clinic at Lisnolan, Manulla, where she also specialises as an iridologist and in reflexology and reiki.
Carina has expressed her horror to The Connaught Telegraph at seeing pupils devouring burgers, chips and bread at lunchtime breaks in Castlebar.
She followed the holistic path after years of extremely painful suffering after being attacked by a patient when she was nursing in Cork.
She told me: “At the moment I am writing some courses to introduce healthy eating to children. It is taking an awful lot of time up but I am loving doing it.
“Eating the right diet affects your energy, behaviour, your mood, your everything. You might have a child in a class that is disruptive because of their diet. They get frustrated and wound up.
“The course is how to show teachers how simple it is in one way. It is about cutting out processed foods, cutting down the sugars, not using juice drinks, cutting out too much bread and things like that.
“It is not about cutting it out completely but to have it in moderation.
“It is about using loads of vegetables and fruits in the diet and using more fish and chicken and using things like rice instead of potatoes all the time. It is about using a whole food diet.”
Carina is working with a company who do online courses for teachers over the summer.
She continued: “I am hoping to have it finished in the next couple of weeks and it will go online over the summer and teachers can then download it, do the course and to bring it into the classroom in whatever way they see fit.
“I have spoken to many teachers and they have said it is something they would love to do.
“I feel with children’s nutrition there is an awful lot of misinformation. We are told eat low fat, eat low sugar, eat low this and low that. The answer is stop eating processed foods, which are not proper foods.
“Eat real food. It’s not convenient because it makes you sick and it makes our children either obese and gives them health issues, serious ones, like asthma.
“There are so many more kids now with diet related problems but when they change their diets they see the improvements.”
She added: “If you look at school lunchtime in Castlebar all the kids are outside Supermac’s. You don’t see many of them getting something healthy. It is all burgers and chips.
“When I go in to supermarkets, especially Lidl, as it is near some of the schools in Castlebar, you see all these teenagers just buying bread and that’s their lunch because it is cheap. They are just eating a big lump of bread. We have really moved away from connecting what you eat to our health.”
Carina is also writing children’s nutrition books. “It is all about using stories to encourage them to ask for the right food instead of parents telling them to eat this or that. It is about giving the child an incentive to ask for the right foods. I am hoping to get them published in the near future.”
She continued: “I used to be a nurse many years ago, but I was injured at work, which led to many health problems, including a neck injury and fibromyalgia.
“I spent 10 long years as a very ill young lady. This is what drew me to natural medicine. I am happy to say that I am once again a very happy, healthy lady, thanks to the natural medicines I love so much, and I have had the privilege of touching the lives of, and helping, so many others in my work.
“My goal is to show as many people as is possible that they too can take control of their health with a little guidance.
“Natural medicine has become my passion in life. I truly believe life has brought me to where I am meant to be, doing what I was always meant to do.”
The main areas of her practice are digestion, allergies, skin issues, pregnancy health, fertility, children’s health, stress, weight management, immune issues, hormone issues, sleep issues and chronic pain.
She added: “I love when I have clients who have given up on finding a solution and they start to feel better. I get an awful lot of people coming through the door and really not expecting much.”
Herbal medicine, she said, has a long and varied history, from all over the globe. The main thing they have in common is that they use the whole parts of the plant rather than isolating a chemical constituent. This results in a natural balanced medicine, easily absorbed and much less likely to cause side effects. Herbs in general work on balancing the whole body rather than just a symptom.
The Lisnolan clinic operates from 8.30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Friday. Carina also gives Skype and Google consultations and she holds a weekly clinic downstairs in Heneghan’s Health Shop on Ellison Street every Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
It’s A Natural Choice clinic is located at Lisnolan, Manulla, Castlebar, and Carina can be contacted on (087) 0978880 or or visit itsanaturalchoice.ie.