“WHY didn’t my doctor tell me?” It's a question I get from almost every patient who comes to see me. My typical patient is one who has struggled with a collection of symptoms for a long time. Their journey typically begins at their primary care physician’s office, who inevitably refers them to a specialist. Diagnostic labs, imaging studies, and various tests all come back normal, which result in referral of the patient to another specialist for further investigation, then another, then another. Each specialist reaches the same “normal” findings, and “refers out” to the next specialist in the never-ending search for a diagnosis for their frustrated patient. And when the whole cycle reaches an apex, they often are sent back to their primary care physician who inevitably offers the patient psychiatric meds in one form or another, and they are given non-verbal messaging that their health issues are “in their head.” Many of my patients tell me they were made to feel like they were crazy at some point along the journey.
BY the time most patients seek out Functional Medicine, they are usually frustrated, exhausted, and totally disillusioned with the conventional medical system. Not only that, they also seek to understand why our medical system - allegedly one of the most advanced in the world, has let them down? They ask me: “Why didn’t my doctor test my vitamin D level?” “Why wouldn’t my doctor test my hormone levels?” “Why hasn’t my doctor ever ordered an entire thyroid panel?” “Why didn’t my doctor check my Apo B status?” “Why have I never been spoken to about MTHFR?” My answer is always the same: “It’s not their fault, they just don’t know. They haven’t been trained to know, and they don't have the time, or the incentive to learn.”
OVER the last 70 years, we have seen alarming increases in the rates of cancers, metabolic, cardiovascular, autoimmune, and neurological disease. There is a rise in the rates of chronic illness, people with multiple chronic illnesses, and mental health issues. Obesity amongst children has nearly become normal, life expectancy is on a downward trend, and people are displaying symptoms of disease at alarmingly younger ages. While many choose to blame genetics for this uptick in diseases, any geneticist will tell you it takes tremendously longer than 70 years (more like hundreds of thousands of years) to produce the degree of changes to the human genome that would result in the increased number of chronic illnesses we have witnessed. It's our environment.
THOUGH industrialization and modernization have served our global population well in regards to comforts and conveniences, today’s modern society has experienced a quiet and gradual shift in the environment that we live in towards something quite toxic. Over the past century or so, we have become increasingly sedentary, and stressed. Our oceans have become progressively polluted, with worsening air quality, controversy over the safety of our water supply, and perhaps most impactfully, a progressively chemicalized food supply.
DURING this short time, the number of chemicals used in our food supply has grown out of control, with virtually no oversight from the FDA. Under the current leadership, food companies are not required to report to the FDA when they add a new chemical to their products, nor are they required to submit independent scientific evidence proving that they are safe. Food additives that have been banned from cosmetics, and European food supply are still being sold to Americans in snacks, meals, and treats. Without our knowledge, the ingredients of long loved, and nostalgic snacks have gradually changed from relatively harmless ingredients such as enriched wheat flour, rye flour, vegetable oil, sugar, salt and leavening, to cheaper, and more harmful ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, or potassium bromate. To make matters worse, many of the chemicals that extend the shelf life of packaged foods are not even required to appear on food labels. Also not labeled are the packaging compounds that leech into the food products themselves such as perfluorinated compounds or plasticizers, which have been shown to disrupt hormones and contribute to the rise of cancers.
AN additional concern is our slow but gradually increased exposure to sugar over time. The current American consumes somewhere between 60-150 pounds of added sugar per year, whereas around one hundred years ago, the average American used to consume only 1 pound of sugar annually. Sugar is a known driver of mortality and morbidity through its impact on cellular dysfunction and inflammation which ultimately leads to disease. Well over 60% of prepared foods that are found in average grocery stores across the US contain sugar, for the purpose of driving flavor, promoting addiction to the product (yes, sugar is addictive), and ultimately promoting the brand’s success. This creates a glucose variability throughout the day that negatively impacts our metabolic health and drives down our immune resilience.
AGRIGULTURAL practices such as intensive farming, rob our soils of nutritional content, and alter the soil’s natural microbiome causing soil erosion, and creating the need for more chemical applications to the soil. This in turn prevents the soil from being able to support the growth of a healthy plant - a phenomenon which often impacts the plant’s immune system. Played out in our grocery stores as massive food recalls or shortages of spinach and lettuce due to e.coli and other such outbreaks, this is another unhealthy phenomenon that our culture has normalized, and we have become accustomed to. The downstream effects continue, manifesting as a diminished level of nutritional density in our food supply, a build up of toxicity in our tissues, and a negative impact on our immune system. So, whereas we should be attaining, for example, our magnesium from our food sources, most people are magnesium deficient, partly because the produce we do manage to consume is nutritionally deficient. Magnesium plays a key role in the electrical conductivity of heart tissue, is implicated in healthy immune function, and digestive health, and supports reproductive health, muscle health, and cognitive health - to name a few. Chemical pesticide products that have long ago been identified as “possible carcinogens,” and banned in other countries, are still being used in our agricultural practices in quantities that are well over the limits which have been identified as dangerous. The onslaught of chemical pesticides also negatively impacts the herds which feed on them, ultimately leading again to human sickness as we feed on mistreated animals that are prophylactically overmedicated with antibiotics.
WHERE conventional medicine loses its footing is not in its abilities to address their patient’s symptoms, but rather in its oversight to take into consideration the impact that the environment is having on health. The traditional medical model serves to treat under the assumption that the disease or dysfunction that is being displayed is unique to the individual, but what needs to be realized is that when nearly every individual is displaying similar symptoms, one must step back and assess with a wider lens to grasp what is happening by asking the question "why?" If a farmer notices that a minimal percent of its crop has failed, it would be reasonable to conclude that those few individual seeds were bad, or that the failure was an isolated incident. But if the majority of the crop fails, a responsible farmer would check the soil’s nutrient content and pH, ensure proper hydration, and whatever else would be necessary. If the goal was to harvest a successful crop, the farmer would be obligated to evaluate whether or not the environment was conducive to produce a healthy yield.
BECOMING armed with the information that you need in order to make smart decisions in your daily living can be the difference between your healthgevity and disease. I totally understand my patient’s frustrations, because I had to overcome all of the same battles. It was a huge learning curve to become aware of, and make changes to the typical American ways of daily living. Over time, I learned that what our culture considers “normal” is in fact “not healthy,” and actually causes harm. It took time to create new habits, and boundaries that I knew would serve my health interests. But small, meaningful changes to the daily way of living is ultimately what leads to success, and a life full of energy, vitality, and health.
FUNCTIONAL medicine seeks to disrupt the current medical model. It is the future of medicine. It is based on the most current and cutting edge research. It treats each patient as an individual, mapping out each individual's medical history from birth to current age, and taking into account emotional health and childhood circumstances. It seeks to identify the root of each illness. It understands that one condition can have many causes, and that one cause can create many conditions. It spends the necessary time walking alongside each patient, applying the encouragement, and needed information to ensure success. It utilizes conventional, and functional lab testing to establish a well rounded understanding of what is really going on with the individual. It understands that a stressed out and dysregulated nervous system cannot heal, and that a bit of knowledge along with small changes to daily decisions can positively impact both mental and physical health, and it seeks to attain healing, not just treat symptoms. Functional medicine is a better alternative to treating chronic disease and maintaining health.
IF you are interested in a new way of experiencing medicine, check out www.soulmindedhealth.com or schedule a free discovery call to learn more.
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