THE SCIENCE IN ‘PROPER’ FUNCTIONAL / NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE:
Most Medical Doctors are really unclear about the fact that there is a massive amount of science – and really leading-edge science – in the ‘highest forms’ of Naturopathic and Functional Medicine. For ‘Natural Medicine’, tainted by the media portrayal and denigration of things like homeopathy, doctors often think it’s all some random or low-science witch-medicine. And actually most have never heard of Functional Medicine!
But at the high-science, technically-advanced end of the Naturopathic spectrum, and in Functional Medicine, there is a huge amount of detailed knowledge about the cellular, molecular genetic, biochemical, and bio-physiological (eg immunological, hormonal, digestive, neurological) mechanisms of disease processes.
Sciences which Specialists within this field use more actively and dynamically than mainstream doctors. So the ‘poo-poo’ing’ is really unwarranted.
DOMAIN OF EXCELLENCE:
Both Functional Medicine and Naturopathic Medicine, in specialist hands, are very strong for presentations and conditions which are generally managed quite poorly in Mainstream Medicine. This is literally by design.
These are mainly: ‘Chronic Diseases’, and ‘Ill-Health Poorly-Responsive To Standard Treatment’. And in Dr Alex’s hands, also ‘Presentations With No Name’.
Now this is NOT because of any deficit on the part of Mainstream Doctors – but rather because, in Mainstream Medicine, the process is one in which we ‘converge data’ to ‘commonalities’ between patients (condition labels)… and then apply treatment based on a ‘lowest common denominator’ (LCD) approach.
So we go :
XYYYSWEBIELGYYEHTE information coming in – means it’s ‘Condition Y’.
Condition Y is treated with Tablet Za or Zb or Zc.
Give this patient a variation of Tablet Z.
LET’S LOOK AT HOW THIS SITS WITH:
a) CHRONIC DISEASE:
This ‘LCD approach is vitally importantly for doctors to ‘efficiently’ make people safe and ‘manage disease’. However it is not necessarily effective. it doesn’t SOLVE disease – not chronic disease – nor make it REGRESS. It’s management. At best.
Now:
> 25% of ADULTS HAVE A CHRONIC DISEASE CONDITION
> Within the next 10 years, this figure is set to increase, especially among adults who have 3 or more conditions at once
YET:
> OFTEN, IN FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE, THERE IS ONE CAUSE (eg Inflammation) UNDERLYING SEVERAL CONDITIONS so diagnosis of that one root cause can tackle all relevant disease manifestations, at least to some extent – and where tackled early enough in the disease process, many manifestations can regress
And all of this is against the backdrop of the fact that THE VAST MAJORITY OF ALL ONGOING HEALTHCARE COSTS ARE FOR CHRONIC DISEASES & THE GREATEST CAUSE OF DISSATISFACTION & UNHAPPINESS IN ADULTS IS ILL-HEALTH.
AND IT’S GROWING.
If you have a chronic condition, it’s time to regroup and take charge! Unlike other countries, including the USA, in the UK there is no mainstream healthcare provision for preventative medicine using FM or NM, nor for medicine that can resolve or regress chronic conditions, except with a few private insurance providers. And even then YOU have to initiate the process.
If you are one of the 15 million people in the UK with this sort of problem, don’t dither! The sooner you present, the cheaper it is and the more we are likely to be able to achieve.
And here is the other situation:
B) WHEN YOU LACK ANSWERS FOR YOUR OWN PROBLEMS:
Using the mainstream medical model, where treatment hasn’t worked for you as expected, that is unfortunately because mainstream medicine sidelines all the valuable information that could inform the clinician as to how you are DIFFERENT from the next patient, and why unlike the next patient, you didn’t get great results from the ‘lowest common denominator’ (LCD) treatment that you were offered.
In other words, there are reasons you didn’t get fabulous results with ‘standard treatment’, and those reasons are particular to YOU. In Mainstream Medicine we are never looking for that information! We are looking to see how YOU ARE THE SAME.
So we gave the example:
That XYYYSWEBIELGYYEHTE information coming in from you, means, in mainstream medicine, that it’s called and tackled as ‘Condition Y’.
BUT the XSWEBIELGEHTE do mean something.
And it’s in those bits of data, where you are different from the next person who was also diagnosed as having ‘Condition Y’, that extra answers to YOUR INDIVIDUAL PROBLEM reside.
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