Watch the CarbSmart Podcast Episode 12 on YouTube

Listen to the CarbSmart Podcast Episode 12 Here

Show Notes for the Podcast

Welcome to another three-question interview from CarbSmart. I’m Dana Carpenter, your trusted guide to everything low-carb. In these interviews, I ask a professional whose job, in some way, involves carbohydrate restriction, three-questions, and of course, listen to their answers.

What is Functional Nutritional Therapy?

In Episode 12 of the CarbSmart Podcast, I am interviewing Christine Moore, a functional nutritional therapy practitioner. Having talked to registered dietitians who embrace carbohydrate restriction about the fact that food corporations are a major source of funding, or college dietetics programs and the effect that has on what they are taught and what they are permitted to say to their clients.

What is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (FNTP)?

A Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (FNTP) is a professional who uses a holistic, foundational approach to nutrition to help individuals achieve optimal health. FNTPs focus on bio-individuality, recognizing that each person has unique nutritional needs. They emphasize nutrient-dense, whole foods and support overall wellness through dietary and lifestyle changes.

What do FNTPs do?

FNTPs assess clients’ health through detailed consultations, dietary evaluations, and functional assessments. They develop personalized nutrition plans tailored to the individual’s specific needs. These plans often include dietary modifications, lifestyle changes, and targeted supplementation. FNTPs educate clients on the importance of nutrient-dense foods and how to implement these changes in their daily lives.

How can FNTPs help someone with diabetes or who is overweight?

For individuals with diabetes or those struggling with weight management, FNTPs can offer significant support:

1 Diabetes Management: FNTPs can help manage blood sugar levels through customized low-carb and ketogenic diet plans, which have been shown to improve glycemic control and reduce the need for medication.

2. Weight Loss: FNTPs design personalized weight loss plans that focus on sustainable, nutrient-dense eating patterns. They provide guidance on portion control, meal planning, and lifestyle adjustments to promote long-term weight loss and overall health.

3. Holistic Support: By addressing the root causes of health issues, such as inflammation and hormonal imbalances, FNTPs support overall wellness. Their holistic approach ensures that dietary changes are complemented by lifestyle modifications, such as increased physical activity and stress management, to enhance health outcomes.

Dana Carpender’s 3 Question Interview with Christine Moore, Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner

Dana Carpender (DC): Hey gang, Dane Carpenter here with another one of CarbSmart’s 3 Question Interviews. Today we are with Christine Woodward Moore, who is, I believe, I’ve got these initials right, Christine, Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (FNTP).

Christine Moore (CM): You got it.

DC: I’m so bright, I can barely stand it sometimes. So functional nutritional therapy practitioner, let me turn off the sound on my phone, so it’s not ringing. There we go. That’s a fairly new profession, but I’d be interested to know how that differs from a dietitian or a nutritionist and, what’s different about the training, what exactly it is you do, and what conditions you can help with.

CM: Sure. Yeah. So, in my experience, dietitians and nutritionists, they basically use the same plan for everybody. And most of the time it’s a low-fat diet. That’s what I’ve seen.

DC: You can see me rolling my eyes.

Functional Nutritional Therapy

CM: I know. but what the Nutritional Therapy Association does is. We start you out at a certain point, so it’s 30 grams of protein, 30 grams of fat, 40 grams of carbohydrates a day. But then we adjust that as we see that things need to be changed. So, the Nutritional Therapy Association accepts a ketogenic diet. We don’t practice one particular diet. We pay attention to the client’s needs and go from there.

DC: You don’t assume that everybody’s the same. How clever.

CM: Right. We’re all bio, bio, I, I can’t say the word.

DC: Bio-individual.

CM: Yeah, thank you. Okay. Yeah.

DC: A question I’ve gotten over and over in the years that I’ve been talking about low-carb is, well, how many grams of carbohydrate can I eat a day? Which my response is always, “How should I know?”

CM: Exactly.

DC: You know, I do well on eating animal protein and fat and other healthy fats, ad lib, eating nuts and seeds, even peanuts and cashews, which are higher in carb than say walnuts and pecans and macadamias and stuff.

CM: Right.

DC: And non-starchy vegetables ad-lib. And I don’t, people are like, well, what are your macros? And I’m like, I don’t know. I just, I eat these foods and it works for me. And generally, when I blow into my ketonic breath ketone meter, I’m in a mild to moderate state of ketosis.

CM: Yes.

DC: I don’t know how many grams of carbs I’m eating to be there. And I don’t know how many grams of fat I’m just eating the way I’ve been eating for, it’ll be 29 years in September, 29 years. Yeah. So you’ve kind of answered, the next question, which is how does carbohydrate restriction fit into your approach as a nutritional therapist? So maybe you could elaborate on that as to, you know, what conditions would you be most likely, I assume diabetes. But, what other things are you likely to use it for? Tell us about how your profession views carbohydrate restriction.

CM: So it’s… we are all for it. And I want to say that we, it’s out of the scope of our practice to treat conditions like diabetes or things like that, basically what we focus on is making sure the client gets nutrient-dense food with the adequate vitamins and minerals. And the diet plan that’s right for them and if it just so happens that diabetes goes away, that’s a win, you know, so as a practitioner, if I had a client who I knew was diabetic, I would automatically start them out on a low carbohydrate, high-fat diet. And I think I would do that kind of gradually so they’re not, like the keto flu or whatever, I would kind of do it gradually so they wouldn’t be discouraged.

DC: And you know, it’s my experience that there are these two main mindsets when it comes to big changes in diet. And one of them is, “I want to do it gradually. Just give me steps.” And the other is, “I’m jumping in.”

I’m doing this, you know, I gave up sugar and white flour overnight at the age of 19. And I read a book on the psychiatric effects of nutrition and there was a list of the, I think it was 48 symptoms of reactive hypoglycemia that most people would think were symptoms of emotional problems. I had 40 of ’em and have been seeing a shrink since I was 11.

CM: Wow.

DC: Yeah. And I was like, gee, I might as well try this. And I thought, you know, I dieted enough and gained it all back and through my life to know I could do anything for two weeks. Right, and I thought, well, I’ll give up sugar and white flour for two weeks and see what happens. Three days later, it was like I’d gone from living in black and white to living in color. And, that was the beginning of the summer of 1978. And here I am. And at 65, I am so glad that I got nutrition so early because it’s nice to do it when you still have some youth to maintain.

CM: Yeah, you look great. I mean, I would never know 65. You said?

DC: I was 65 in October. Yep. Wow. I’m 65. This is my standing joke these days is that I’m 65, I weigh a buck and a quarter and I’m five foot two. And that means that by definition, I am a little old lady.

CM: Well, yeah, oh my goodness. I look old now. The hair is just like, all gray, but

DC: Well, sweetheart, so is mine. I found my first gray hair when I was 22 and it was already, I’m trying to show my hands, probably going on two feet long. It was long. So I had been going gray since I was 20. And I was solidly gray by the time I was 40. This is all courtesy of a nice girl at the local beauty school.

CM: Uh, yeah.

DC: So, but hey, I feel that being auburn suits me.

CM: Yeah, it looks good.

DC: Yeah, and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to go to the beauty school than it is to go to a salon. Plus, as a person who went to massage therapy school, Chicago School of Massage Therapy, class of 86, I’m indebted to the people who let me practice on them.

CM: Yeah. Guinea pigs.

DC: How much, this wasn’t on the list of questions I sent you, but I’m going to ask anyway, how long is the training to be a functional nutritional therapeutic practitioner?

CM: When I went through the program, it was nine months and I think in my opinion, it was like two years of school squashed into nine months. And I mean, there was that much information to learn, but it was a lot of fun, very interesting. We had three in-person workshops that we had to go to. So whatever place was closest to my location is where I went. And they have them all over the United States. So don’t feel bad if you’re like on the West Coast and there’s going to be something close to you.

But the rest of it was online learning and that was a new experience for me because, you know, I could wait till the last minute if I wanted to, but it made me stay on track.

DC: Well, I got to tell you, you can wait till the last minute within in-person schooling, although it says the girl who flunked out of college or freshman year.

CM: Oh no.

DC: Well, I just, it’s funny how skipping classes to, get high and walk around in the sunshine will do that for you.

CM: Hmm.

DC: I just had undiagnosed ADD in fact, nobody had even come up with the whole idea of ADD yet. And, I wasn’t ready for it, but in massage school, I got straight A’s all the way through – straight A’s.

So yeah. Do you have any blanket, nutritional advice, you would give to everybody? Cause I do.

CM: Yeah. I would say learn to pay attention to your body. And keep track maybe of if you, if you’re feeling bad all the time, pay attention to how you feel after you eat certain foods and it’s kind of like an elimination diet type of thing.

But, I would say also perfection – we don’t like that – it is progress. You know, it’s making those little bitty steps. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you mess up one day, just get back on and you don’t have to be perfect. I’m not perfect.

DC: Perfect is the enemy of the good. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

CM: Yes, yes. I mean, I’m not perfect, but, and you know, there’s one thing that I want to share too, and I had to learn this the hard way. Eating a ketogenic diet does not prevent you from getting cancer. There are…

DC: I’m sorry you learned that the hard way.

CM: Yeah, yeah, it was a big shock because breast cancer was nowhere in our family.

But I firmly believe because I was even doing really like, like two day fasts and all that. It was the stress. It was the stress that caused it. I firmly believe it. Because I was eating healthy. So just remember that I want you to remember that that you still need to pay attention to the other factors in your life like stress, sleep, proper hydration, all of it goes together.

DC: And there’s things you can’t even know about like what pollutants are in your air or in your water. You know, what are you being exposed to when you walk past the neighbor’s lawn? I mean, you just don’t know. And there are so many things we don’t know in general. There’s a wonderful book by Lewis Thomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Thomas , who was a doctor who wrote wonderful essays about science and philosophy and stuff like that.

He won a Pulitzer for The Lives of the Cell. But he also wrote a book called The Youngest Science and it was about the history of medicine and he called it the youngest science for a reason. And there’s still far more we don’t know than that we do know. By the way, my piece of advice every now and then, you know, like every six months or so thing will go around Facebook.

If you could give everybody three words of advice, what would they be? Mine is always, don’t eat crap.

CM: Don’t eat crap, I love it.

DC: Don’t eat crap. I mean, you know, just don’t eat crap. And you don’t even, we could quarrel, and God knows I do, about whether animal foods are better, or plant foods are better, or, or whether veganism is a great idea.

Spoiler alert, I don’t think it is. All of that.

CM: I lost you there. Oh, hello. Yeah, you’re back.

DC: Okay, my internet connection is unstable, it would be unstable while I’m doing this

CM: Of course. But I think we can all agree, whether we’re, you know, I know some hardcore carnivores, or whether we’re vegans, I think we can all agree that certain things do fall into the crap category. Coca Cola. Lucky Charms.

CM: Oh yeah. Oh, yeah.

DC: We all recognize certain things as crappier than other things in their category, for instance, I’m only classic rolled oats because see the part about I don’t eat grain and I don’t need all those carbs, but I would certainly recommend a traditional rolled oats over instant oatmeal with a ton of sugar in it.

CM: Right, right. And that’s where I say it’s about progress, not perfection. If you have to find those substitutions at first, some people like you can go cold turkey, but others have to gradually, take those garbagey things out. And fortunately, there were a lot of substitutions. So

DC: I’ve been thinking of maybe coming up with a six-month or a twelve-month program of every month you just do this one thing to majorly change your diet and number one would be eliminate all sugary beverages.

That would be absolutely number one. No sugary beverages. My friend Rob Thompson, with whom I’ve written some books, Dr. Rob Thompson has done the glycemic load diet and it’s the simplest low-carb diet I know to describe. No starches, no sugary beverages. That’s it. No starches, no sugary beverages, because without starch, which is in cookies, donuts, pie, all that stuff, without the starch combined with the sugar, it’s really hard to eat a huge amount of sugar. It’s really hard to eat, you know, more than a handful of jelly beans at a time. Some people probably can. I never liked jelly beans anyway, but most people do. I was just, I was a major sugar junkie, stealing money to support my, I was stealing fives and tens from my parents wallets to support my sugar habit.

And we’re talking in the early 1970s. So that was a lot of money.

CM: It was bad when…

DC: yeah, yeah, it was just ridiculous. But I never liked jelly beans or gumdrops or Twizzlers or any of that stuff. I like chocolate, hard candy. Lots of hard candy. Lots and lots of hard candy. Well we’ve done your three questions.

Anything else you’d like to add in the way of nutritional advice or recommendation or how people can find someone like you near where they live?

CM: Yeah, so you can go to the website. It’s nutritionaltherapy.com. And I believe the last time I was on there, I believe they’re offering a discount right now.

So go check that out. And from there, from the webpage, you can, they have a section where you can find a practitioner near you. They have a whole list of people. And it’s a really, it’s a really nice website. It’s a great program. They’re constantly staying up to date with information. And fortunately, I can have, I still have access to that because I’m a member of the Nutritional Therapy Association.

So I get to stay on top of stuff too. But yeah, go check it out. I think it’s very rewarding just to be able to help people and see their lives improve, their quality of life. And you’re making a difference. We need more nutritional therapy practitioners. And this is what I want to stress too.

There’s a difference between NTP and FNTP. The FNTP is, we go a step beyond the nutrition and we, I’m trying to think of, there are points on the body that indicate certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies. And so we have somebody on a table and we go through a whole list and we, you know, press on these areas and if it hurts in one area, that might be a sign of deficiency.

So, there’s a whole thing that we have to learn in addition to the nutrition stuff. So, if you don’t want to do the extra stuff, just do the NTP.

DC: That almost sounds related to traditional Chinese medicine.

CM: Yes. Yeah. So for example, one of the most popular one and the one that hurts me the most, so you know where your rib cage meets at that point, so go about an inch below that and you’ll feel a bone.

It’s called the xiphoid process.

DC: I graduated from massage school, straight A’s. So I know what a xiphoid process is.

CM: And then so go to the left once you feel that, go a little bit below that and press on the left side of your rib cage. And if it’s painful, then you’re not producing enough stomach acid.

DC: Huh. Okay.

CM: I just find it fascinating.

DC: Well, and of course, my palpation skills are all related to finding the bad muscles, the bad joints and all of that. I have really good palpatory skills.

CM: I bet you do.

Dana’s Experience with Traditional Chinese Medicine

DC: And by the way, my experience with traditional Chinese medicine has been stellar. I have huge respect for traditional Chinese medicine. Can I explain how acupuncture works? I can’t. I absolutely cannot. And there are some good acupuncturists in Bloomington, Indiana. I don’t know anybody who does their traditional herbalism. And my experience with traditional Chinese herbalism has been mind-blowingly good.

I had a friend who was a Chinese doctor who I worked with, Chi Chow. She worked at the same place where I was doing massage and I saw her do things that were not supposed to be possible. Literally, I saw a little girl who had had spinal meningitis who was paralyzed and deaf. And the doctors held out zero hope for her.

She was just barely three and she was going to be paralyzed and deaf for the rest of her life. Her parents somehow heard about this. They lived at north of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and they found out about this Chinese lady in the Chicago suburbs and started bringing their little girl down, two, three times a week.

And they started in January, and by May or June, that little girl was tearing around our office like any normal toddler, and starting to startle at loud noises. Like I said, I saw Chi do stuff that was not supposed to be possible, so.

CM: Yeah, on the herbs and things like that, like the Chinese medicine and all that and they’re there for a reason, you know, and we need to, I think, use, use it more often. I mean, because its natural.

DC: I’m trying to come up with an herbal blend that will stimulate GLP-1 production because the GLP-1 drugs are so popular and do work so well for weight loss. It seems to me that if we could come up with an herbal version, there, that would be a good thing. Anyway, we’re about to run out of time according to the nice people at Zoom.

So, it has been lovely to see you, Christine. It has been far too long. I have not been on a low-carb cruise in like four or five years since a year or two before the plague. Have you been at all?

CM: No, I have not. I’ve been trying to deal with things here.

If you’re ever down in Bedford visiting your family, let me know, I have a car, I will come get you.

And we will go, you can actually feel Janeway’s face if you want.

CM: That would be awesome. Well, my father said that they are planning on going June 6, so if everything is going well with my eyes, then I should be able to come.

DC: I hope so hard. So hard. So anyway, good to see you. Thanks so much for your time.

CM: Absolutely. Thank you.

DC: And have a wonderful rest of your day.

CM: Yes, you too.

I have known for many years that nutritional requirements vary from person to person. Early on in my reading about nutrition, I learned of the work of Osmond and Hoffer, who discovered that giving massive doses of niacinamide, vitamin B3, to schizophrenics resulted in about a third of them having a dramatic reduction in psychosis.

This was a non-physiological dose. A dose impossible to get from food, and only some patients responded, a minority, which led to the work being discounted by the medical community at large. But it taught me early on that nutritional needs differ. This makes the emergence of nutritional professionals taught to tailor recommendations.

To the individual, exciting. If you’d like to find a functional nutritional therapy practitioner near you or study to be one or possibly both, check out nutritional therapy.com. Thank you, Christine, for teaching us about your profession. Watch for the next three question I review.

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