
This is a photo of me from 1975. It was an ornament I made at school in the first grade. Yes, I'm a mature adult. (ahem) But damn!! I was a little cutie!!
My mom has often told me that from a very young age I wanted to know "why" about pretty much everything. I would not accept being asked to do something or being told something was a certain way without wanting to know more.
This trait has continued through my adulthood. I am constantly wanting to know more and to understand more.
Dr. Will Cole was one of the lecturers for Module 1 of my Health Coach Training Program with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. He is a functional medicine practitioner and explained more about this branch of the medical profession.
For those of you who, like me, don't know much about functional medicine, it looks at the root causes of symptoms and disease. As Dr. Cole points out, a diagnosis just slaps a label on a constellation of symptoms and does nothing to uncover or to discern WHY the person is experiencing those symptoms.
Functional medicine and integrative nutrition coaches both proverbially look "under the hood" to seek deeper understanding about why symptoms are present. This makes so much sense if the ultimate goal is better health and wellness. Medications and treatments which serve to simply reduce symptoms without exploring the underlying cause merely place a band-aid on the larger issue. This approach resonates deeply for the girl who always wants to know WHY.
A new WHY that comes up for me is this: WHY are we so conditioned to just accept a diagnosis without asking more questions? This is, in my opinion, a huge failure of allopathic/Western medicine.
What are your thoughts on or experiences with functional medicine?
I am on the journey of functional medicine for my diabetes diagnosis. I'm reading the work of Dr. Jason Fung who writes that fasting can reverse diabetes. I'm at the beginning of this journey and am looking forward to it. I think fasting will be an exercise in restraint to counteract our society's instant self-gratification. I'm hoping to find peace and balance with eating as well as bringing my A1C down to normal.
Our 27 year old daughter has been chronically mentally and physically ill for 16 years. Her diagnoses include chronic Lyme, endometriosis and anxiety/depression. Over the course of our health journey we have done/used a done a ton of functional medicine. Things including supplements, acupuncture, red light therapy, coffee enemas…