Lost in the World of Drugs

I recently received some statistics from a study by Mayo clinic reporting that 70% of Americans are on at least one prescription medication.  They went on to say that 50% are on at least 2 drugs and further more, 20% are on five or more medications.  This should be a shocking statistic but unfortunately it is not all that surprising to me.  It is a rare new patient that I do a consultation with that is not on at least one drug and many find it easier to just hand me a sheet of paper with all their medications on it.

These numbers speak to my heart and remind me of a patient that I had a few years back.  This patient's chief complaint was chronic pain and fatigue.  She was only 27 years old but she had spent most of those years struggling with pain and the depression that often goes along with chronic disease.  During our initial consultation, she handed me a sheet of paper, hand-written with the names of about twenty medications on it.  She reported that these were the drugs that she had been prescribed. 

To many times the response to chronic pain is to attempt to cover up the symptoms with drugs.  When that doesn't work more drugs are given or you are told that it is all in your head.  There is a cause to the pain that you are feeling.  The answer lies within your individual biochemistry and physiology.  Don't give up, keep seeking the answers.  Find a holistic, functional medicine doctor willing to search for the true cause, so that you can restore your health, naturally.

What is Different about Functional Medicine?

Functional Medicine Seeks to Identify Your Toxic Load

Your body was created with the inborn ability to heal itself.  Unfortunately there are "stressors" that inhibit your body's ability to perform this function.  A stressor is defined as anything that inhibits your body's ability to function normally and pushes you away from your optimal health.

Stressors can be physiological, biochemical, metabolic, emotional or structural.  Some common stressors are:

• Environmental toxins
• Digestive dysfunction
• Viral, bacterial, and parasitic pathogens
• Drug side effects
• Mineral or vitamin deficiencies
• Allergies or sensitivities to foods
• Spinal subluxation
• Emotional stress

"Total Load" is the accumulation of these stressors and the overall effect that they have on your body's ability to function optimally.  Your body is able to adapt greatly to the stressors that it encounters, but everyone has a breaking point.

For some that breaking point may look like an allergy, an auto-immune disease, arthritis, or some other chronic disease.

Functional Medicine Recognizes Biological Individuality

There are subtle differences in everyone's biochemical make up.  What that means is that different people will react to foods, chemicals, drugs, etc. in different ways.  Have you ever smelled a certain perfume and felt a headache come on, or used a particular cleaner and become sick in the next few hours?  One of the classic examples is red wine triggering a migraine in certain people.  How come this happens to some people and not others?  Every one of us is genetically unique and we have all been influenced by the environments that we have lived in up to this point.  Functional Medicine seeks to find out what your individual nutritional needs are and what you should work hard to avoid contact with.

Functional Medicine is Patient Specific

Rather than trying to match up set of symptoms with the right medication to suppress those symptoms, Functional Medicine seeks to find the underlying cause of the disease process.  I use the Functional Medicine techniques to do a thorough examination of your past medical records, perform a comprehensive history and examination, and utilize science-based Functional Diagnostic Tests to uncover those often undiscovered, real causes for your body's inability to function correctly and heal itself.

Once known I can develop an individualized, patient-specific treatment to eliminate those stressors that are preventing your body to work correctly and guide you in ways to provide what your body needs to begin the healing process.