When it comes to your health, what is the difference between conventional medical treatment and the alternatives in the functional space?
A lot, actually.
And maybe you’ve already been through the conventional medical treatment ringer. If you’re reading this, I’d guess that’s quite likely.
While my blog is mostly about breast implant illness and cosmetic procedure injuries, this subject really pertains to anyone who either struggles with healing, or maintaining a sense of wellness in general.
Conventional Medical Treatment
For so many of us, conventional treatment starts with being born in a hospital to a mother who’s hooked up to an IV and a contraction monitor, isn’t allowed to eat or drink, and will generally end up lying on her back and told when to push you out. Of course sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned and our beginning can involve being surgically removed from mom via c-section. Three of my five children came out the c-section way. One emergency and two elective (forced).
At that point, you’ve officially been entered into the conventional medical system. You’re signed up for baby well checks where you’re inspected from the outside by your pediatrician ever few months and given a shot or two to prevent certain diseases.
Before long, you’re very familiar with the doctor’s office. It’s not your favorite, but you know it’s a regular place you visit. You go there to be measured, weighed, and checked for milestone progress, and whenever you have a sniffle, sore throat or fever. You’re issued antibiotics and antivirals, put on steroid creams for rashes and might get started on monthly allergy shots or put on antihistamines, all normal stuff.
As you grow, you’ve learned that your conventional treatment and your doctor are anchors in your life when it comes to health. You’re doctor is one of the most important people in your life, always there and ready to help.
Over the years, you don’t generally hear too much about how to stay healthy by eating a good diet, or about the importance of sleep, exercise and stress management. Medications can alleviate the problems that arise, but nothing about prevention outside of cdc recommended shots. Supplements are silly and don’t work, and surprisinglybad advice about what lifestyles are ok are the norm with your doc, your trusted health guide.
Where you land with regard to your health after being processed through this unfortunate seemingly broken system is really anyone’s guess. If you happen to be someone who is pretty sensitive and negatively affected by toxic exposures, you may just be getting ready to enter a pretty frustrating time in your life. You may have the diagnosis and the drugs or surgery, but do you feel better?
Isn’t that all that matters?
Conventional Medical Treatment For Breast Implant Illness
All grown up now and out of the well check phase of life, you’ve been assured by another kind of doctor and the FDA, that breast implants are perfectly safe. Ok. Great. And a lot of women have them, so they must be.
Fast forward to your first symptom inside the conventional medical treatment system. Your doctor actually brushes you off. Just like that. You may be prescribed birth control for headaches or painful periods, an SSRI or benzo for anxiety, pain meds for severe joint pain. And maybe I’m exaggerating on that last one, I don’t know, do doctors do that? I never see a conventional medical doctor for anything at this point in my life, but looking back, it’s mind-blowing to remember the bullshit that came from the so called medical experts.
When your hair starts to fall out, doc points to maybe thyroid — maybe anemia. Diagnostic labs confirm mild anemia and a normal thyroid. And then you’re on (conventional) iron supplements. And now you’re constipated. And now you’re on laxatives. The sudden appearance of food sensitivities and insomnia and increasing anxiety, even though you took that benzo are making you wonder if you might need to be institutionalized. What is happening?
You: Is it my breast implants?
Doc: NO
More symptoms appear. Now your hair is falling out in unimaginable clumps. Skin looks dull and is aging at the speed of light. Nails are brittle and you’ve been getting migraines twice a month. All of the food you eat makes you feel awful, and it all gives you heartburn. Now you’re on antacids. Before long you are just feeling exhausted and foggy all the time. Your memory is shit and vision is suddenly blurry, especially at night and early in the morning. Eye doc says your vision is fine — just dry eyes — you need eye drops.
You: Are we sure it couldn’t be my breast implants?
Doc: Yes.
At this point, most of us have seen specialists who tell us the same thing because they ran special diagnostic labs that all came back normal.
You feel like you are dying a slow death that is apparently undetectable by lab work. You lose faith in the conventional medical treatment system and start investigating for yourself. You start with supplements. Some make you feel better and some don’t. But you veer away from asking doctors for help because they won’t.
You’re basically at the front door of functional, holistic healing, getting ready to knock.
Facebook Groups About Health: A Gateway
Alternative types of healing modalities are most often discovered only after years of gaslighting inside the conventional medical treatment system. You really have to dig and dig to find good information on functional, holistic healing regimens and protocols.
In the case of breast implant illness, most of us find THE breast implant illness group, you know the one. This isn’t to say that the group is strictly functional, holistic healing based, not at all as a matter of fact. But it is a doorway to walk through, a gateway to connect you to another option, an arrow in a different direction almost opposite of the basic standards of conventional medical treatment.
The Breast Implant Illness group isn’t the only group on Facebook that serves to introduce people to the idea that maybe my conventional doctor, my primary care physician isn’t the smartest person when it comes to my health.
There are groups dedicated to everything you can think of out there — every ailment, autoimmunity, disorder, syndrome, disease, healing modality and subject around maintaining wellness of the human body. It’s inside these groups, through those doorways, people are discovering that healing is not only possible, but that it’s certainly not the responsibility of your doctor to heal you.
That’s your job.
Once you realize you are responsible for you, all paths are clear for you to actually heal.
SO. WHAT CAUSES ILLNESS?
Funny — or not — your doctor probably cannot answer this question. I take that back. If you see a functional doctor, he/she probably knows what causes illness. But if you ask your Primary—Care-Physicain-Disease-Manager, “what’s making me sick?” They’re more likely to tell you you’re not sick than to admit they don’t know.
Illness is caused by something called Metabolic Chaos®. Coined and registered by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition founder, Reed Davis, “Metabolic Chaos is a state of health that exists because of complexities in one’s metabolism and underestimated influences from the environment, so correlation between the symptoms and cause is unpredictable.”
What that means is that your body is only capable of handling so much at the same time. Once exposures are at your body’s maximum capacity for processing or metabolizing, it will have to start to figure out how to deal with them at a less efficient capacity.
Over exposures to things like bad food, water and air are surprisingly a lot more harmful than you may think. And over a period of decades, those things along with OTC and prescription drugs, toxic cosmetics and personal care products, perfumes, exposure to and living with things like lawn care toxins (glyphosate), mold, parasites, Lyme, breast implants, botox and a million other things that are considered normal, all contribute a pretty hefty toxic burden on all of your body’s systems. In short, those things all serve to ultimately make you ill.
Hidden stressors, imbalances and dysfunctions, if not soon resolved, cascade into other areas and Metabolic Chaos® ensues.
That’s what it sounds like. At the end of the day, what we experience as symptoms and disease is nothing more than the body’s reaction to chronic internal, external, physical and emotional stressors which bounce from one system to the other creating more and more metabolic chaos along the way.
Healing can only come with learning and following the principles of health building, which most Primary Care Physician-Disease-Managers don’t seem to understand or even care to hear about.
Functional Holistic Healing
Functional holistic healing begins when we start to address what is causing all of this dysfunction. The roots, some say. Who hasn’t heard of Root Cause Healing?
A short list of things that result in and contribute to Metabolic Chaos® include:
- adrenal dysfunction
- hormone imbalances
- digestive dysfunction
- mitochondria dysfunction
- nervous system dysfunction
- circadian rhythm dysfunction
- poor nutrient breakdown and absorption
- pro-oxidant/anti-oxidant imbalances
- dysbiosis and gut malfunction
- systemic inflammation
- immunodeficiency
- immune system dysfunction
- impaired or blocked detoxification pathways
All of this, and more, the cause of systemic dysfunction, Metabolic Chaos®, and ultimately disease, can be resolved. Function can be restored, inflammation cleared, pathways repaired and unblocked.
Not All Functional Health Practitioners Are The Same
I’m not going to slam anyone here as I truly believe all functional practitioners are working for the greater good. We all have our place.
FDN Practitioners, like myself, rely on the details in the data to guide healing. You’ve no doubt experienced showing up to a new doctor’s office early to fill out all of the intake paperwork only to never have anything in your history addressed. That’s not how it works when your goal is to find the cause of the symptom/dysfunction, etc. Your lifestyle and medical history is extremely important in consideration of how you’ll heal, not to mention what you’re healing.
And after we get to know you a little bit better, we turn to the most cutting edge functional labs available for assistance in revealing every possible healing opportunity. We dig for the answers, which has been a welcomed change when you’re helping someone who just broke free from conventional medical treatment.
What’s your experience? Please comment if you have a story.
And if you can relate to this and are seeking guidance, want/need access to the proper lab work to help identify what systems have been damaged, I’d like to offer you a free consultation to find out if I can help you finally begin to restore function with your own custom healing and detoxification protocol. Click the link below to schedule your free consult today.
