Exclusive Insights: Guest Hearts

Sue Faulk, Holistic Nurtrition Consultant and Educational Therapist for DTI

April 2016

​On April 14, Discovery Therapies will be hosting a free nutrition workshop. Sue Faulk, Educational Therapist, Holistic Nutrition Consultant & Health Coach will be our speaker. Her nutritional journey is one that has inspired many of our staff. Below is an interview with Sue. It is just a short snippet of her story. We hope it gets you thinking about changes you can make to help you and your children learn and grow!

How did you get involved in health and nutrition?

Sue: My story begins when I was 20 years old and my mother had breast cancer. Later my father developed thyroid cancer. At that point, my family began to research about nutrition and we would implement what we learned into his diet. He would get better and then go back to his old ways of eating. We didn’t realize that he needed to permanently change the way he was eating for the maximum benefit. Or even that we should follow the same dietary changes. My mother is still living but my father’s health failed and he died from cancer after a ten year battle. We had lost him.

When my youngest child was one, I was about the age that my mom was when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I felt like a sitting duck. Both my parents had cancer and my grandmother did, too. If there was anything I could do to keep myself from getting cancer- I knew I should do it. I knew from previous research and reading that nutrition could have an impact on cancer and health and that was the start of this journey for me.

How did you become interested in healthy foods and their affects on learning?

Sue: After my third child was born, I started feeling exhausted and having brain fog. One day, I was homeschooling my son and my nephew. I looked at my nephew and couldn’t even remember his name. I had an overwhelming feeling that something wasn’t right.  Through improving my nutrition, I was able to get rid of some of these problems so, I could see how food was affecting my own brain.

The more I read and studied, I realized that there are some foods that can actually inflame the brain and keep it from functioning well. Conversely, there are some foods that can improve the ability to learn. As I was making these connections, more and more webinars, books and articles became available. Information written by medical doctors was confirming my suspicions, observations, and personal experiences.

As an educational therapist, I wanted therapy to be as effective as possible. I wanted families to know what I was learning - that they could help their student’s progress through good nutritional practices.

If you had one single piece of advice for parents, what would it be?

Sue: Feed your kids more fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds! Phase out and stop eating processed foods filled with sugars, food colorings and other chemicals, such as pesticides, that have been shown to have poor effects on the brain.