The mission of Nurture Healing is to inform, inspire and empower those affected by chronic health challenges.
When we nurture our bodies with the proper conditions, we are better able to grow, enhance and reclaim our health. The goal of the Nurture Healing programs and materials is to empower you with the tools and skills that can help you to grow greater health and wellness in your life regardless of your medical condition.
Nurture Healing was established by Joanna Garritano, MD as a response to the rising global epidemic of chronic illness and to help those suffering with chronic health challenges.
Despite some of medicine’s finest contributions to humankind, our world is currently experiencing a sharp increase in the number of people who suffer from complex, chronic diseases. Nearly one out of every two adults in the United States, (that’s over 117 million Americans), face chronic health challenges—conditions such as diabetes, autoimmune disease, allergies, asthma, digestive problems, depression, chronic headaches, chronic pain, hypertension, heart disease, and cancer to name a few. Today, over 80% of health care visits are from people with chronic health conditions and these conditions are rarely “fixed” by what modern medicine can offer. For most chronic health problems, the conventional approach is to prescribe treatments that control or reduce symptoms. But many of us need something more. This is where tools and skills and lifestyle interventions like those shared in the Nurture Healing Programs can help.
When people use certain tools and skills in their lives, they can often dramatically enhance their health, sometimes even reverse some chronic illnesses, and almost always increase their sense of wellbeing. Feeling good is not just about luck, or genetics, or circumstances. We can also create significant shifts in the biology of our bodies to help ourselves feel better.
True wellness is about inviting healing into our lives by aligning physically, emotionally, and mentally with health and wellbeing. It’s about learning to listen to the needs of the body and removing the things that impede healing and drain the body of energy. Taking actions that promote health doesn’t mean we are always cured of our illnesses, but it does allow our bodies the proper conditions in which to restore the greatest possible degree of wellbeing.
It is entirely possible, and in fact recommended, to receive both appropriate medical management of a health problem AND at the same time actively cultivate the conditions in your life that bring greater health and wellbeing. The Nurture Healing Wellness Programs are not a replacement for medical care. Instead, the Wellness Programs offer dynamic educational opportunities for individuals to receive detailed information and guidance about how to use wellness skills to create greater health and wellbeing in their lives. If you are facing a particular diagnosis or a health challenge, you should still receive appropriate medical treatment from your doctors or health professionals and implement any tools from the Nurture Healing programs under the guidance of your physician as necessary.
Whether we realize it or not, we each have within us an inherent strength and resilience. Becoming active participants in our health is about becoming resilience and tapping into our own inner strength. And it is about learning how to support and enhance our body’s healing potential. Applying the wellness skills of Mindfulness as Medicine, Food as Medicine, Relaxation as Medicine, Movement as Medicine, and Joy as Medicine can help to trigger the body’s inherent healing capacity so that recovery, wellness and renewal in the body are maximized.