The Healthy Hunter

Exciting news! I will have a booth set up at the Jamboree so be sure to stop by and signup for my informational emails. I'm looking forward to meeting you in person and fielding your questions! I had a great response at the Father's Day Shoot and Bigfoot Shoot at Black Knights. I'd love to continue the momentum. If you're new to the site, please see my original article below...Stay tuned for my next article coming soon and see the link in my "About" section for e-mailing me your questions directly.

Welcome to the first edition of, “The Healthy Hunter”! Within this first edition, I will tell you a little about myself, then bore you with my credentials and qualifications. I’ll try to lay out how I hope to serve and benefit the UBNJ membership with my education and experience. My goal is to offer our members (and their immediate family) health and wellness information that will help them not only in the field, but in everyday life as well. I am hoping to get feedback from our members on what topics they would like to see covered within my scope of expertise. This can be accomplished by e-mailing me directly, interacting on our future reformatted website, or direct contact at some of our our UBNJ sponsored events. If all else fails, I’ll just choose a topic of relativity to the sport of bow hunting which we hold so dearly to our hearts.

First, a little personal information about myself is probably in order. I’m happily married (sorry ladies!) to my great wife Amanda. She has taken up archery and has a third place trophy in the UBNJ 3-D Jamboree to show for it. I have also witnessed her shoot a Robin Hood. No more teaching her how to shoot! Over the years, she has been completely supportive of my, long hunting seasons, working a full-time job and going to school the rest of that time, and in the last few years, me going to school full-time and scraping out a living. My son Mike Jr., is 17, and patiently waiting for me to take him afield as soon as my schedule clears. He has taken two consecutive 1st place trophies in the UBNJ 3-D Jamboree for his age group. My 8 year old daughter Jessica is going to start shooting this spring. She would never go to sleep at night when I called home to say I was bringing home a deer. She had to wait up, see the deer, and critique my shot placement. My newest edition to the tribe is Francesca, at 18 months. She prompts me to take her around our living room so she can point out all the deer. One of her first words was “buck”. As for me, I’ve served on the UBNJ Council as an Ocean County Rep. since Jack Spoto first became President many years ago. My best was taking second place at the South Jersey State Shoot after taking lessons from my great friend Al Tilton. I have never had a hunting season where I didn’t succeed in providing healthy venison for my family. The past 4 years have been dedicated to getting my advanced degrees and certifications in Holistic Health, so I was not able to go afield. Luckily, I have good friends who offer me their extra deer (special thanks to Jess’s Godfather, Rich) to butcher and feed my tribe.

Now for my qualifications and experience, and how this will hopefully correlate to helping our members. First of all, I have a Masters Degree in Holistic Nutrition. Given the vast amount of information obtained from this level of education, I will try to summarize what I learned as briefly as possible. Besides learning advanced chemistry and biology, I also learned, in great detail, about enzymes, amino acids, antioxidants, and phyto-nutrients. We also coved all the different types of diets, the use and application of herbs, the use and application of homeopathic treatments (I also took electives focusing on children), various detoxification methods, farming methods and the importance of the health of our soil, and the adverse effects of the various toxins that we are exposed to in our foods, as well as our environment in general. Lastly, we were taught how to apply health and wellness in the corporate environment and within the community.

From this education, I was convinced that I needed to narrow down what I planned to learn in the future, and how I was to apply that knowledge in my practice. My mentors suggested I enroll in the C.H.E.K. Institute in San Diego Ca.. Fortunately, the Institute is large enough to offer classes at satellite locations, so I take most of them in Manhattan, NYC. C.H.E.K. is an acronym for Corrective Holistic Exercise Kinesiology. The Institute has two areas of concentration; the Practitioner side which focuses mostly on musculoskeletal and physiological factors, and the Holistic Lifestyle Coach (HLC) which focuses primarily on psychological and nutritional aspects. The full practitioner course is a four-year program with certifications given at each level i.e. Exercise Coach, and Practitioner Levels I - IV. The HLC levels I - III is a two-year program, however, because certifications are given out at each level of completion, you can start applying your knowledge in stages. Due to the increasing complexity of each level, most C.H.E.K. Institute students do not achieve the top levels and yet are still very successful in their practices. I am currently a CHEK Practitioner Level II and will be completing my HLC III training by the end of this year. It will then take me another two years to achieve the very advanced Practitioner levels III and IV.

In addition to my postgraduate qualifications, I have worked with a Chiropractor for 1 year and an OBGYN for 1 year. I am still being mentored by a local doctor (D.O.) on my way to becoming a doctor of Naturopathy. I am also a Certified Metabolic Typing Advisor, level II. I use this as a foundation for all the people I help. Metabolic typing (MT) allows me to discover which foods and supplements a person is genetically designed to run most efficiently on. In contrast, it also identifies which foods and supplements to avoid. MT is based around 11 fundamental homeostatic control systems (FHCS): autonomic nervous system, carbo oxidative system, steroidal hormone balance, neurotransmitter balance, electrolyte/fluid balance, acid/alkaline balance, prostaglandin balance, endocrine system, ABO blood type, and constitutional elements. To complement MT, I am also a certified Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist (FDN). With this certification, I am authorized to run functional lab work in the form of; saliva testing, urinalysis, blood tests, and stool samples, under the direction of a doctor (D.O.). FDN uses the information gathered from these labs to develop protocols using natural supplementation and bio identical hormones. FDN also teaches lifestyle modifications to go along with the protocols.

In summary, all of these qualifications allow me to identify internal and external stressors in people’s lives, and helps us to identify what is preventing them from experiencing optimal health. The following is a list of common ailments that are open topics of discussion, from you, the UBNJ members, within the scope of “The Healthy Hunter”. If any of these interest you, email me your question. If picked, I would like to display your first name and County you reside in for the rest of the readers. If you prefer to remain anonymous, please let me know. We will not be diagnosing or treating anything. These articles will be informational, and not to take the place of your doctors advice. The reader will be responsible for researching and validating all topics. Topics that fall under the realm of; musculoskeletal, nutrition, hormonal, and psychological would most likely be addressable. Some examples of specifics would be: infant development, corrective exercise and stretching, postural imbalances, strength training, rehabilitation and injury prevention, cardiovascular conditioning, digestive issues, weight issues, food selection, hormonal imbalances, fatigue, concentration, mood, female issues, and farming practices to name a few.

Hope to hear from you soon, Michael R. Buron Sr.