Hi there

Can you believe that it’s nearly Christmas … scary how quickly this year has flown by.

I was just thinking this morning about what the most common thread had been that I had seen in practice through the year. The first thought that popped into my head was how often I had heard patients say, “I am just feeling so overwhelmed by life”.

We are bombarded by information overload on a virtually minute by minute basis. In fact a patient was telling me the other day that there was an article in Time magazine which said that if one read the New York Sunday Times, from cover to cover, you would receive more information then someone would have received 50 years ago in their entire lifetime!

Much of this information overload surrounds aspects related to our health. What is the “right way” to go, the blood group diet, the Atkins diet, low carb low-fat high protein diet, the shake for breakfast, shake for lunch diet, the list goes on and on.

And, in spite of all this information, the world is getting sicker!

Functional Medicine is the approach to optimum wellness that I have followed in my clinical practice for more than 25 years, and has proved, time and time again, to be the ideal approach to “full on” health, vitality, enthusiasm and overall well-being.

What is Functional Medicine?
Functional medicine is personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes instead of symptoms for serious chronic disease. It is a science-based field of health care that is grounded in the following principles:

  • Biochemical individuality describes the importance of individual variations in metabolic function that derive from genetic and environmental differences among individuals
  • Patient-centered medicine emphasizes “patient care” rather than “disease care,” following Sir William Osler’s admonition that “It is more important to know what patient has the disease than to know what disease the patient has.”
  • Dynamic balance of internal and external factors.
  • Web-like interconnections of physiological factors – an abundance of research now supports the view that the human body functions as an orchestrated network of interconnected systems, rather than individual systems functioning autonomously and without effect on each other. For example, we now know that immunological dysfunctions can promote cardiovascular disease, that dietary imbalances can cause hormonal disturbances, and that environmental exposures can precipitate neurologic syndromes such as Parkinson’s disease.
  • Health as a positive vitality – not merely the absence of disease.
  • Promotion of organ reserve as the means to enhance health span.

Until next time then,take care.