January 22, 2010

Dr Carole Hungerford, general practitioner, might come across a bit unusual by your average GP standards. A lively, willowy woman in her 60’s, Carole is a determined and provocative advocate for a nutrition-based approach to wellbeing.

Committed to gaining a more holistic understanding of patients, Carole often spends an hour or more in consults and is generally booked out weeks in advance at medical practices in Bathurst and Sydney. One of her biggest gripes with mainstream medical culture is the general disregard of what we’re eating in the diagnosis and treatment of illness. She believes doctors and patients turn too easily to drugs to treat conditions that are often connected to what we are (or are not) getting from our food.

Carole spoke recently at a forum on “Healthy bodies, healthy Relationships” hosted by Watershed Landcare. There, she asked the audience of some 110 local women “when livestock are sick, the first thing the vet will ask the farmer is ‘what has the animal been feeding on?’ – Why aren’t doctors asking patients the same thing?”

Thought-provoking and sometimes alarming, Carole touched on a number of modern day illnesses that are on the increase, she believes, due to lack of nutrients in our diets.

Whilst we could all benefit from eating more fruits and vegetables, Carole went further to explain studies that show how the nutrient levels in present day fruits and vegetables is far less than what they used to be, due to depleted unhealthy soils. “If it’s not in the soil, it’s not in the food chain” she said.

“Not all soils are created equal” she explained, “with some soils naturally lacking in various minerals. Crops and livestock remove minerals when they’re taken from the farm, these nutrients are often crudely replaced with fertilizer, eg: N, P, K and Calcium. But quite often this is only replacing 3, 4 or at the most 5 of the numerous minerals that are removed. Additionally, the presence of a mineral in the soil does not mean that it’s available to the plant with physical and chemical interactions coming into play, such as acid soils (pH)”.

Carole has written “Good Health in the 21st Century”, an easy to read ‘encyclopaedic’ health guide that covers a range of diseases – from asthma, arthritis, cancer, obesity to mental health.

The Women in the Landscape Forum: Healthy Bodies, Healthy Relationships was supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry under its Australia’s Farming Future initiative.