Nutritional Counseling in Greenville, SC
Nutritional Counseling at IHP Greenville. Dr. Hendry, DAOM — functional medicine, root-cause diagnostics, personalized care. Call (864) 365-6156.
The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in the typical American diet is 15–20:1. The ratio at which eicosanoid synthesis shifts from predominantly pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory is around 4:1. That gap is not a philosophical preference — it's the substrate difference explaining elevated CRP, joint aching, and skin inflammation in patients who eat "pretty well." I identify the specific biochemical imbalances first — food sensitivity findings, inflammatory markers, blood sugar dysregulation, nutrient gaps — and then build the dietary prescription from those findings. Chinese dietary therapy adds another layer: the thermal nature of foods, organ system affinities, and constitutional food appropriateness that shifts dietary guidance from generic to individual. The result is a dietary plan that is genuinely specific to you, not a variation of the same Mediterranean template everyone else receives.
How Nutritional Counseling Works
Nutritional counseling sessions include a detailed dietary history, food-symptom correlation analysis, review of relevant lab markers (inflammatory markers, blood sugar, lipids, nutrient levels), and development of a personalized nutrition plan. This is not calorie counting — it is clinical nutrition targeted to your biochemistry and health goals. Follow-up sessions track progress, adjust recommendations, and address barriers to compliance.
Conditions Treated with Nutritional Counseling
Functional Nutrition Counseling vs. USDA MyPlate for Complex Metabolic Conditions
USDA MyPlate guidelines provide a practical, population-level communication framework for general dietary balance — a legitimate public health tool designed to address the most common dietary deficiencies across a heterogeneous population. For a 35-year-old with no chronic conditions, MyPlate provides useful proportional guidance. For a patient with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, elevated fasting insulin, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and a BMI of 32, MyPlate's recommendation to fill half the plate with fruits and vegetables and a quarter with grains provides insufficient specificity. The patient's insulin resistance requires carbohydrate modulation below what MyPlate endorses; their Hashimoto's may involve gluten-driven molecular mimicry of thyroid antigens, requiring individual assessment of gluten sensitivity; their hepatic steatosis responds to specific reductions in fructose and refined carbohydrate load that MyPlate does not address. O'Keefe et al. (Am Coll Cardiol, 2021) demonstrated that the composition of carbohydrate intake — whole grain versus refined, legume-derived versus grain-derived — produces differential metabolic outcomes unaddressed by portion-proportion guidance. Personalized nutrition counseling at this practice begins with the patient's laboratory profile, identifies metabolic dysfunctions driving their presentation, and constructs a dietary protocol with mechanistic specificity for their individual biochemistry.
Research & Evidence
Personalized nutrition counseling grounded in functional laboratory assessment addresses the biochemical individuality that population-average dietary guidelines cannot accommodate. Food sensitivity testing via IgG antibody panels or elimination-reintroduction protocols identifies dietary triggers for intestinal permeability, systemic inflammation, and symptom exacerbation that are invisible on standard panels. Organic acid testing reveals functional vitamin and mineral insufficiencies at the metabolic pathway level: elevated methylmalonic acid indicates B12 insufficiency at tissue level regardless of serum B12 (Stabler, N Engl J Med, 2013); elevated kynurenine-to-tryptophan ratio indicates IDO-mediated tryptophan catabolism consistent with chronic inflammation. O'Keefe JH et al. (Am Coll Cardiol, 2021) demonstrated that dietary pattern modification toward whole plant foods produced cardiometabolic improvements across lipid profiles, glycemic control, and inflammatory markers through both direct nutrient mechanisms and microbiome-mediated production of short-chain fatty acids including butyrate — a primary energy substrate for colonocytes and a direct inhibitor of NF-kB nuclear translocation. Kris-Etherton PM et al. (J Am Diet Assoc, 2009) established that physician-referred medical nutrition therapy reduced LDL cholesterol by 15-25 mg/dL and systolic blood pressure by 5-11 mmHg in cardiovascular risk populations, outcomes comparable to first-line pharmacotherapy in motivated patients.
Your First Appointment
Keep a 3-day food diary (everything you eat and drink, with approximate times) before your appointment. This gives Dr. Hendry a realistic baseline to work from.
Why Dr. Hendry for Nutritional Counseling
Dr. Hendry's training in Chinese dietary therapy (food as medicine) combined with modern functional nutrition gives him a uniquely holistic perspective on how food interacts with your individual constitution and health conditions.