Hello and welcome……
Welcome to my home……my virtual home.
My name is Jennine and I am a Registered Nurse and a Registered Holistic Nutritionist. Ever since I was 12, I’ve always had a strong yearning and vision to help the sick and hurting, to bring comfort to them and provide support as they recover to their best health. My father was my inspiration. He was a physician, but one who truly had a strong call upon his life to the Healing Arts. I watched him work long, tireless and selfless hours caring, treating and teaching those who suffered because of disease. He was the best doctor in the world! He also cared for me during the many years that I was sickly and missed too much school on account of tonsillitis, sinusitis, fevers, ear infections, skin rashes, allergies and numerous digestive and bowel problems, and constant “tummy aches”. I received the best that medicine could offer, including a steady intake of antibiotics, pills, elixirs, antacids and allergy shots. I had the most excellent and skilled specialists and surgeons too, for my father wanted only the best to care for and to operate on his little princess, his only daughter amongst three sons.
As a teen and later as an adult, it seemed as if I grew out of some of the ailments I suffered as a child, but, only to develop newer conditions, including PCOS, anemia, debilitating menses and PMS for which I missed more school. I even developed diabetes and came under the care of more specialists and under the knife of more surgeons. I thank God for our medical healthcare system – it saved my life and relieved me of symptoms on more than one occasion!
As I began to practice as a Registered Nurse, I was reflective of not only my personal journey to pursue, catch and maintain health, but also the journey of my patients for whom I cared. After working in Toronto, Saudi Arabia and Australia, it actually occurred to me (for some strange reason) that people are the same all over the world: they laugh the same when they’re happy, they cry the same when they’re sad, they hurt and bleed when they are injured, and they require care from others when disease develops. Reflecting on this, my biggest question was, “Does disease have to develop? Is disease preventable? Is there something that we can do that may lessen disease and dependency on so many medications, to achieve health and vitality and not just absence of disease?”
Making sense of health ………
Making sense of health actually came to me! We don’t have a “healthcare” system - we have a “disease care” system! That means that maintaining our health, or rather, maintaining my own health, and preventing disease is a personal responsibility. Even just to think about my future, yes, happiness, enriching relationships and financial stability was important, but a more important consideration was that my future depended upon my health! In addition, an important key to my health was its dependence upon my nutrition.
Making sense of nutrition……
I had always been interested in food. I used to hang posters of food on my bedroom wall growing up and I fondly recall the years my mother enlisted the hands of my brothers and I to assist her in making traditional meals from scratch, a way of life drawn from her European background and combined with gleanings from my father’s Asian roots.
Over the years volunteering as a Community Food Advisor, I used to enjoy doing food demos and teaching people how to cook and showing them what to do with unfamiliar foreign foods. But during that time, I never made the connection between one’s diet and ones’ health – they were two separate entities to me at that time. I never knew that making sense of nutrition was yet to be made.
Making sense of nutrition was a slow yet life changing event for me that developed over years of personal experimentation, not only in learning how to put together nutritious meals for myself and my family, but also in consuming foods intuitively. Intuitively? Yes, I discovered how to eat the foods that were capable of lessening some of my symptoms as well as foods that made me feel better, stronger, more energized and infused with vitality. I went on to study Natural Nutrition and its impact upon the body. I began to implement simple dietary steps that impacted my health and wellbeing – an outcome I had never quite achieved, that is, being free of disease solely from medical intervention.
It started to make sense: my health and well being was connected to my nutritional and lifestyle practices, and my nutrition (that is, the amount and quality of nutrients that actually made it into my body) was connected to the state of my health. Although so very basic (and I am somewhat embarrassed to say), I actually started to make the connection – a connection that was logical and made sense.