December 4, 2017
We are elated to feature DIFM member, Jena Savadsky Griffith, RDN, who works in the community setting! Having had a successful career in journalism, music and television production, Jena was inspired to redirect her work path and returned to school after transforming her own health and life with integrative and functional nutrition. Following a more circuitous route, Jena amassed certifications from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the Institute for the Psychology of Eating and a functional nutrition mentorship while attending and graduating from the University of Northern Colorado. She has been the main nutrition instructor for Charlottesville’s community education program for the past 8 years teaching about sugar metabolism, eating for energy and bone health, always with an integrative approach. Jena has a practice in Madison County, Virginia, where she specializes in digestive disorders and chronic pain. She is the Associate Editor and incoming Editor for the Integrative RDN, the newsletter for Dietitians in Integrative and Functional Medicine (DIFM) and recently authored the chronic pain chapter for an upcoming Integrative and Functional Medical Nutrition Therapy textbook. Jena recently co-presented on developing and integrative and functional nutrition toolkit for her local academy chapter and will be presenting on the same subject at the annual Virginia Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (VAND) in April. It is her intention to educate and inspire RD’s to embrace and practice integrative and functional nutrition tools, as we are ideally positioned to make the most difference in this country’s present health climate.
What is your area of practice and how do you incorporate integrative and functional nutrition into your work?
I was part of a generation that grew up on Captain Crunch, Kool-Aid and convenience foods and by the time I was in my 20’s I had unknown food allergies and a full-on health crisis. Before Integrative and Functional Nutrition (IFN) was given a name, an integrative and functional physician helped me to not only discover the root cause of my health issues and get well, but woke me up to the power of food and inspired me to change careers.
Experiencing the life changing benefits firsthand, IFN philosophies are inherently built into the way I think and practice. Although my main focus in private practice is digestive health and chronic pain, I teach several community education classes on topics that range from bone health to sugar metabolism to eating for energy. Nutrition can sometimes be the wild west and as people look for that one diet that will give them all the answers and perennial health, I like to cut through the fray and empower students, patients and clients to filter that information in order to find what is best for them only. There are as many ideal diets as there are people who eat!
Teaching is also a way to stay close to the issues that confuse people and the chronic health conditions they face. In my individual and class work, I take into consideration all parts of their lives, not just the physical aspects of calories, weight, nutrients. Certainly these are essential, but we often ignore other integrative parts of lifestyle, emotional and spiritual health that either contribute to or manifest as a physiological problem. We talk about sleep, activity, relationships (with food and people), work or service and how/where they find a deeper sense of life purpose.
Stress is a part of all of our lives, but if we don’t address how it’s currently being handled, reduce and re-strategize, then healing is difficult to achieve. When we sit down to a meal, we bring with us layers of emotions and years of experiences, in addition to our preferences, ancestry, beliefs and traditions. Not only do we all metabolize food and information differently, we all look at food differently on a plate. For some food is just calories, for others it may be guilt, potential muscle, pleasure or companionship, all in the same meal. In classes, when I talk about food or nourishment on a deeper level, there is recognition and an understanding about their own personal battles, what may be stopping them from taking care of themselves and how to change that.
On the more functional side, bio-individuality also rules. We assess what is happening on a biochemical level through functional and traditional labs and use all of the information to co-create specific diets and practices that will work for them in order to achieve their health goals and make change that lasts.
What are some of the results you have seen since integrating functional nutrition into your practice area?
IFN has been my approach from the start, so I can’t imagine practicing any other way. I was my first example of the wellness that an IFN approach can create. In order to get healthy, we focused on the gut microbiome, toxicities, deficiencies and addressed other existing life stressors like taking care of a sick parent and using exercise in a beneficial way. In this way, I was able to fully recover. Clients and students have achieved excellent results that include ending years of constipation, eczema, incorporating previously forbidden foods back into their diets, remission of crohn’s disease, reducing or eliminating pain, migraine reduction and/or elimination, weight loss and better sleep. Often people heal their digestive issues not only with diet changes, but when they find work they love, heal or end a relationship, find exercise they enjoy, etc. As food is our specialty, a basic philosophy is that any condition can be improved within 30 days if the body is given what it needs…proper, individualized nutrition.
Where have you completed most of your training in integrative and functional nutrition?
In the beginning of my career, I just began reading every nutrition book printed. Later I got coaching certifications from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the Institute for the Psychology of Eating and did a year long mentorship in clinical and functional nutrition with Elizabeth Lipski, PhD, frequent IFM speaker and author of Digestive Wellness.
I’ve taken many classes and have done continuing education in herbs, Ayurvedic medicine, all aspects of gut health, thyroid conditions, cooking, essential oils, counseling and psychology. As a habitual seeker, I am always getting caught down the rabbit hole of research, which has served me well as associate editor of DIFM’s newsletter and hope it will do the same as incoming Editor.
What advice would you give anyone interested in learning more about integrative and functional nutrition?
Nutrition is the foundation of Integrative and Functional Medicine. In this system, food, and as a result, RDN’s have the potential to get the attention and respect it deserves. We now have consumers who have access to any information, so as a profession, it is our duty to educate ourselves on all things food as medicine and remain ahead of the curve. Anyone wanting to learn more about integrative and functional nutrition already has the curiosity and openness gene, so I expand on that. Find one thing that you’re interested in at a time, whether it’s an integrative therapy like yoga, meditation, herbs or analyzing functional labs, and practice, focus and gain confidence. If possible, get yourself a genetic test or an organic acids test and study it, learn how to analyze and interpret the results for yourself. In this way, when we speak about something we’ve experienced, an authenticity comes through and is felt by our patients and clients.
Joining DIFM is an obvious, inexpensive first step with many benefits. Simply having access to the integrative and function nutrition toolkit, reading The Integrative RDN in print and the content heavy online version exposes you not only to current information but a new way of seeing. You have access to webinars which then exposes you to other practitioners established in the field that leads you to other learning opportunities. It is easy to follow established IFM and IFN practitioners on social media and reputable programs are becoming more plentiful for the advanced learner. There are so many ways to get deeper into your craft…trust yourself and take action!
Thank you for the inspiration, Jena!