“FOOD FARMACY” Nutritional Healing and Resetting your Metabolism with Dr. Jim Bentz

Interview By Sasha Frate | Introduction by Ainsley Schoppel

Dr. Jim Bentz is the top practitioner and trainer for Neurological Integration System (NIS) in the United States, teaching healthcare practitioners the principles of Functional Neurology. Dr. Bentz has utilized NIS—a system that incorporates ancient eastern medicine practices with current neuroscience to promote self-healing through the detection and correction of signaling disruption in the nervous system—as his primary modality since 1997. Here, we will learn more about Dr. Bentz’s role as a health practitioner and the ways in which he is educating his clients on nutrition, food systems, and the benefits of connecting with local farms.

Tell us a bit about your personal story growing up and how it shaped your desire to pursue becoming a health practitioner. I was fortunate to grow up in a health-conscious family. My dad was a dentist, and he had read Weston Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration early in his career. Price was a dentist, and in the 1930s he visited indigenous tribes around the world. He found that all these tribes had excellent dental and physical health as long as they ate their traditional diets. He was also able to study related indigenous tribes who were exposed to processed foods by missionaries and traders. When they abandoned traditional diets for processed foods containing white flour and sugar, their dental caries (cavities) rate went from almost zero to 60-95% within a very short time. They also suffered more heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer than those who adhered to traditional diets.

My mother was also very healthconscious. As kids, we never had soda and rarely had desserts. She cooked almost all of our meals from scratch, and we never had fast food. I knew at an early age that I wanted to be a healthcare practitioner, and I chose chiropractic as it was most aligned with my belief that the body was able to heal itself.

What led to the shift in your practice from your chiropractic background into NIS? Why did you choose this application for treating people?

I began practicing in 1985, and early on I was frustrated by the fact that patients often had to return for care of their spinal problems because the adjustments I was making didn’t hold. In 1997 I attended my first Neurological Integration System seminar with Dr. Allan Phillips. This was a game changer for me. Without manipulation, Dr. Phillips was able to resolve my own chronic low back pain with NIS that weekend. This is because NIS allows a practitioner to get feedback directly from the brain to identify the underlying cause of a symptom. Symptoms are often the result of a disruption of neurological signaling between organs, muscles, joints, and nerves. NIS allows me to accurately identify these signaling disruptions, and prompt the brain to restore signaling and restore normal function. Since there is no intervention or force involved, NIS is a very safe and effective way of bringing the body back to optimal function. NIS has also allowed me to expand my practice beyond musculoskeletal symptoms to include immune, neurological, and organ dysfunction.

What is your experience/ observation with the role of nutrition and the level of education that the majority of medical practitioners have, at least in the U.S. and Canada?

My nutritional training in Chiropractic College consisted of only one course and was sadly lacking in much substance. Much of it was based on the “Food Pyramid” which we now understand is not a good guide to eating for optimal health. In discussions with medical doctors, I realized that their training in nutrition is equally poor. Modern medical practice is focused primarily on pharmaceutical and surgical intervention, and I’ve found that very little emphasis is placed on the relationship between diet and health.

What are you commonly seeing in the majority of your patients that has led you to want to educate on lifestyle and diet?

One of the most common things I hear when I ask patients about their diet is that most of them believe they are eating a healthy diet. When I ask for more details about what they are actually eating, I find that they are often eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), with lots of processed foods, grains, sugar and unhealthy fats. This tells me that the food industry has been very successful in their attempts to convince people that their products are healthy when in reality they are contributing to the rising levels of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases that have become “normalized” in our society.

You regularly share information about sourcing food from local/regional farms with your clientele and broader audience What inspired you to start doing this?

We’re fortunate to live in an area with lots of growers and ranchers committed to producing high quality meats, fruits, and vegetables without the use of toxic pesticides and other chemicals. Because they are local, the items are much fresher than foods shipped thousands of miles. In meeting many of these growers and ranchers in person, I’m impressed with the passion and commitment they have to producing high quality food. Consuming as much fresh, locally grown food with low toxicity and high nutritional content is one of the best ways to improve health. I often remind people that the way in which we spend our food dollars is one of the most important choices we can make. This quote from Wendall Barry sums it up well:

“People are fed by the food industry which pays no attention to health, and treated by the health industry which pays no attention to food.”

What if we were to coin a new concept of “food farmacy”? How might you describe the meaning of this?

I like this concept. We’ve become so indoctrinated with the idea that there is a pill for every ill, and we’ve forgotten the healing power of real food. I believe it’s so important to get this fundamentally right in our lives. Pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements won’t correct the problems caused by poor dietary choices.

Extending on this concept of food as medicine, you’ve not only advocated for sourcing straight from the farms, but you also educate about growth practices including the use of glyphosate and chemical usage, as well as the benefits of grass fed and pasture-raised animals. Can you share a bit more about this?

The agricultural industry has become more and more reliant on pesticides and other chemicals to increase yields and profits for crops like corn, soy, and wheat. These, along with industrial oils like canola, soy,,and corn oil, are the primary ingredients for most of the processed food that fills supermarket shelves. These chemicals are devastating our health. Glyphosate (Roundup) is a known carcinogen, and almost three hundred million pounds of it was applied to food crops last year. Most meat that is industrially raised is loaded with steroids and antibiotics due to the crowded and inhumane conditions in which it’s raised. There’s a huge difference in toxicity and nutritional value between industrially raised meat, eggs, and milk from animals raised on grass and pastures without chemical inputs.

You created a seven-week

Metabolic Reset Program to facilitate some of these lifestyle changes and habits through guided learning and practices that also helps people achieve metabolic flexibility. Why was it important to you to offer this type of program, and what do you see as the most valuable takeaways for those who participate?

I created the Metabolic Reset Program as a way to help people adapt to a healthier way of eating. Because of the way many people have eaten for much of their life, their bodies have shifted their metabolism (how they convert food to energy) in a way that perpetuates their cravings for the foods they consume which are high in sugar and other simple carbohydrates like flour, grains, potatoes etc. They lose the ability to burn fat which then is stored in tissues rather than burned as fuel. This becomes a vicious circle as metabolic flexibility is decreased. This not only leads to weight gain, but can also result in diabetes, heart disease, and inflammatory conditions like arthritis. Helping people shift their metabolism has a wide range of benefits including weight loss, decreased inflammation, increased energy, improved hormonal balance, and detoxification, to name just a few. y