Dr. Jeff Bland explains the basic concepts of Lifestyle Medicine and how it can optimize the chances of a positive outcome for individuals needing medical help. We now know from Epigenetics that our particular lifestyle and environment speak to our genes and determine the outcome of our health. And there seems to be more and more research recently confirming this. A recent study for instance documented how type 2 Diabetes could be reversed with lifestyle changes.

After 30 years of practicing Medicine, I have learned that for any chronic illness or ailment, treating underlying imbalances and dysfunctions is more important than making a diagnosis and naming the disease. Ultimately, asking the right questions is more important than giving a label to a set of observations.

This is because most if not all chronic problems, from heart disease to arthritis, migraines to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), depression to fatigue, usually have multiple factors that need to be addressed – this is called the total load. The total load is the sum of the factors that influence a person’s life and health, including diet, exercise, job stress, relationships, state of mind etc. Individually, each of these elements might not cause a problem, but their cumulative effect can overload our normal functioning and cause harm. Everyone’s tipping point is different and each of us manifests or experiences overload in our own unique way.

For example, several patients may all be diagnosed with IBS but the individual factors underlying their illnesses may be varied, meaning that each requires different treatments to address their specific problems. Simply diagnosing these patients with IBS, obscures this critical fact.

When working with patients, I always assess their total load and then try to reduce it by slowly removing the factors that could cause harm. At the same time, I will add new elements that will nourish them in order to enhance the healing process.

Some examples of what may need to be reduced or removed from your diet are, sugar, chemicals, caffeine, or alcohol. Or you may need to lessen the burden of responsibilities, your work load, or how much tension you carry in your muscles. Examples of factors that may be lacking and need to be added are nutrients, sunlight, sleep, down time, play time, love or joy.

To understand the concept of total load, think of yourself as a ship floating in the water. Depending on the load you’re carrying, you are either riding high above the waterline or sinking beneath the waves. And just as you can save a sinking ship by tossing some ballast overboard to lighten the load, your health can be improved by reducing the overall number of factors that cause stress to your system. The good news is that frequently you may only need to identify two or three factors to toss overboard in order to feel better.
Unfortunately, I, like all doctors was never taught this at medical school. Instead, we were taught to name it, blame it and tame it. That is to look at the symptoms, signs and test results, make a diagnosis, name the disease and treat it.

This model works well for the acute or short-lived illnesses that were most common until about 70 or 80 years ago. There is no better model for crisis care management, such as a heart attack or burst appendix, a broken bone or an acute bacterial infection like pneumonia. Due to the incredible success of antibiotics in treating most infectious diseases, we have extrapolated that model, looking for a single cause with a magic bullet treatment, and adapted this thinking to all diseases.

But most complaints today are not acute illnesses, rather chronic problems, which are not served well by this model in which varied complex disease processes are reduced to a single diagnosis. Giving a set of observations a name and treating the named problem does not help us understand the origin of the problem and its causes, which are usually multi-factorial. This name-it, blame-it and tame-it medical paradigm is not particularly effective for the chronic diseases which are so endemic today.

I want to make it clear, a label or descriptive name for a problem is not a bad thing–it is often reassuring to know what we have. I do not want to under-estimate the significance of this. But we have been habituated to assume that if we know the diagnosis and the name of our disease we will know how to not only treat it, but fix it.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Doctors are increasingly practicing from the vantage point of an outdated and ineffective model and are not addressing the needs of the millions of patients who come to them with complicated chronic problems. They give them drugs to suppress symptoms and do not address the underlying physiological imbalances that produce these symptoms. Therefore we do not change the course of the disease and often end up causing more harm than good because the underlying problem persists and many people develop side effects from the drugs.

Luckily for all of us, there is a new little known science-based model for chronic diseases, called Functional Medicine that deals with the underlying causes instead of just suppressing symptoms. It is a true mix of Chinese and Western Medicine. This new medicine is systems-based biology rather than disease-focused. It redefines chronic disease as a functional alteration in the physiological network that requires a systems biology approach to its management, improving both the safety and effectiveness of treatments.

This model helps us understand how the disruptions of molecular pathways cause dysfunctions in various body systems that then result in disease. It is less concerned with a diagnosis and more concerned with the underlying dysfunctions that lead to the symptoms and the disease.

My Chinese Medicine teachers taught me to think of myself as a gardener when I see patients. When a plant or tree is not growing well, when the leaves are drooping and turning yellow, we do not call it yellow leaf syndrome and paint the leaves green or cut off the sick part. The gardener evaluates why the plant is not growing well. He determines whether the plant is getting enough or too much sunlight, enough or too much water, is the soil rich and balanced in order to nourish the plant? And he looks to see if the roots are being impinged upon, and if so, what needs to be removed.

Even though you may have been given a diagnosis, always ask these two questions with any chronic problem

1. What is harming you and needs to be removed to permit the body to heal?

and

2. What is lacking or what does your body need to promote healing?

Anyone who has taken a painkiller certainly knows that there is a big difference between temporary relief and real healing.  Even though a person who takes a painkiller may not consciously feel pain, it is widely understood that this relief does not necessarily mean that a “cure” or a “healing” has occurred.

And yet, it is surprising how many people think that various conventional drugs have performed some type of miracle just because they provided short-term relief of pain or discomfort.  Little do many people know that when a drug “works,” this may be the “bad news.” It may be that the drug works by suppressing the disease, thereby creating a much more serious physical and/or mental disease.

Although antibiotics and select other drugs may be an exception to this general observation, getting rid of an infection will not influence the immune factors that led the person to be susceptible to infection in the first place, and in fact, antibiotics are known to disrupt one’s inner ecology, disturb assimilation of nutrients, and even tend to make the person more susceptible to new infection (a future blog will deal more directly with this issue).

Painkillers, on the other hand, may provide great reduction in pain, but this may result in the person continuing to walk on that injured ankle and cause increased injury.  The person with arthritis, as another example, may continually take one or more painkilling drugs that provide some relief but these drugs also create their own tolerance, addiction, or pathology, usually leading to much more serious health problems.

A smart person might consider taking a conventional drug that provides temporary blessed relief while concurrently seeking some more deep treatment that nourishes, nurtures, or augments the body’s own defenses.  A problem, however, is created when a sick person frequently relies upon a drug to provide temporary relief and does not seek a real, more profound healing.

Differentiating Real Healing from Suppression of Disease

When a person experiences relief from any treatment, conventional or alternative, one should not necessarily assume that a real healing has occurred.  While it is possible that the person may really have been healed, it may also mean:

• the symptoms went away on their own, and the treatment had nothing to do with it.
• the treatment palliated the symptoms, providing short-term relief but resulted in the recurrence of symptoms in the near future.
• the treatment “worked” by suppressed the person’s symptoms or his/her own immune and defense system, thereby pushing the disease deeper into body. Although suppression of symptoms may cause them to disappear, they tend to be replaced, sooner or later, with more serious, deeper symptoms that are more discomforting and potentially dangerous.

Homeopaths and naturopaths both assert that there is a big difference between real healing, palliation of symptoms, and suppression of disease, even though each of these results may initially seem to be the same.

What people don’t usually understand is that there may be a danger in the frequent or recurrent application of treatments that suppress symptoms.  The concept of suppressing symptoms is well accepted and understood in psychology.  It is commonly observed when a person suppresses his or her emotions, such actions tend to push the emotional turmoil deeper, leading the person to explode at some future time, often at people who are not directly related to the origin of the person’s problem.

While people may be familiar with the problems associated with the suppression of emotions, people are generally not familiar with the possibility that many conventional medical treatments can suppress their physical symptoms, driving the disease deeper into the person. And yet, suppression of disease is so commonplace in today’s medical treatment that it is virtually ignored.

Doctors and drug companies tend to minimize the real problems of suppressing the disease process by referring to the “side effects” of a drug.  And yet, pharmacologists commonly note that the determining a drug’s “effects” and its “side effects” are completely arbitrary.  They are both the direct effect of the drug upon the human body.

Ironically, many conventional drugs are touted specifically for their ability to “suppress” symptoms…or even suppress the body’s own immune system.  Ultimately, pushing the disease deeper into the person is the result of using pharmacological agents that are explicitly prescribed for their ability to control or inhibit symptoms that are the natural defensive functions of the body.  Suppression of disease may provide the semblance of benefit (or at least short-term benefit), but ultimately may make the person much sicker.  Such suppression of the disease process may lead to increased chronic disease, immune dysfunction, and mental illness, all of which we are seeing together in epidemic proportions.

Understanding the Healing Process from a Whole Systems Perspective

The father of American homeopathy was a German physician named Constantine Hering, MD (1800-1880).  Hering was a respected conventional physician who was hired by a publisher to write a book critical of homeopathy, and in his research on the topic, he became convinced of its efficacy.  After many years of practicing homeopathy, he observed that people go through a specific healing process after being given the correct homeopathic medicine. He developed guidelines in which to determine when a real healing is taking place. These guidelines have been called “Hering’s laws of cure,” but some homeopaths prefer to call them “Hering’s guidelines of cure.”

To understand these guidelines, it is first useful to know that homeopaths carefully evaluate the evolution of a person’s physical, emotional, and mental/spiritual symptoms.  Homeopaths consider mental/spiritual symptoms to be deepest to the core of a person’s being for they represent the will, the ego, the sense of security that the person feels, and the person’s overall state of consciousness.  Homeopaths today wonder if the immune system’s important ability to identify “self” from “non-self” is dynamically connected to a person’s mental/spiritual state of health, thereby linking mind and body health.  The emotional symptoms are external to the mental/spiritual level of the person because imbalances in the deeper level will create increased propensities to various fears, angers, depressive states, and other emotions. The physical symptoms are the most outer manifestation of the person, though every level can and will influence the other.

Also, each level has certain symptoms that have more or less influence on a person’s overall health.  For instance, a person’s asthma will be deeper than his or her skin rash, a person’s fear of death will be deeper than his or her irritability, and a person’s loss of self esteem will be deeper than a subtle reduction in memory. Likewise, when comparing symptoms on different levels, a person’s heart disease will more profoundly affect his or her health than a difficulty in concentration experienced on the mental/spiritual level.

In light of these levels of the human being and the degrees of intensity to which a symptom impairs a person’s ability to live, Hering found that healing progresses:

· From within to without (from the deepest part of our being to the most external);

· From the most recent disease back in time to previous ones (a reversion of the disease process);

· From the top of the body to the bottom of the body.

Ultimately, basic concepts of survival and evolution are at the heart of this understanding of the defenses of the body.  The human body can and will defend its most vital functions first before defending its more superficial functions.

Homeopaths observe that a truly effective therapy sometimes elicits a temporary exacerbation of certain symptoms, usually in the superficial ones or sometimes ones that the person had many years previously. Homeopaths assert that a true healing is taking place when a person’s present symptoms are more superficial than previous ones.  One of the reasons that homeopaths and their patients have come to believe that homeopathic medicines are not simply placeboes is their observations that some symptoms tend to increase in the process of a curative response (healing from within to without…and the above other guidelines).

This “externalization” of symptoms is commonly observed by homeopaths who witness that approximately 20-30 percent of their patients with a chronic illness tend to experience skin symptoms, nasal or bronchial discharges, diarrhea, early menstruation with clots, profuse perspiration, or some other externalization of the disease process after an effective homeopathic treatment is provided.

On the other hand, if and when a person takes a conventional drug and his or her symptoms disappear but new ones that are more serious develop, this result suggests that the treatment has suppressed the person’s condition and has made them worse. Unknown to most physicians and patients, people undergoing conventional medical treatment are commonly having their disease suppressed. Homeopaths assert that one of the reasons that there is increased mental disease and increased chronic disease at earlier and earlier ages is because of effective suppression of the disease process by conventional medical treatment.

Distinct from methods that suppress disease are those that help disease express and externalize itself.  Homeopathy’s use of the principle of similars (using medicines bases on their ability to CAUSE the similar symptoms that the sick person is experiencing) is one important safeguard against disease suppression because it mimics the wisdom of the body rather than suppresses its symptoms.

I like to call homeopathy a type of “medical biomimicry” because a homeopathic medicine is chosen for its ability to mimic the symptoms that the sick person is experiencing.  Because there is a certain wisdom to the bodymind, mimicking this wisdom is a good way to elicit a real healing.

Here is a great piece that my colleague and friend and guest author for the website, Dana Ullman MPH has written. Dana is “homeopathic.com” and has authored 9 books on the subject. His newest book is The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (North Atlantic, 2007).

Our military thinking and our medical thinking have surprisingly much in common. It is not just happenstance that doctors proudly assert that they seek to attack illness, combat disease, kill infective agents, and create a war on cancer or on any disease. Physicians seem so stuck in this medical mindset of militaristic thinking that it is not surprising that they have a long history of attacking other viable strategies that seem to be less medical or less militaristic.

In order to treat a patient, the doctor must provide a diagnosis that determines the existence of a “Western medical disease” (what might be called a WMD), even if this diagnosis is sometimes based on faulty medical intelligence or just selective intelligence.

Doctors usually choose to “shock and awe” the body. An elaborate attack ensues utilizing our most sophisticated technological armamentarium, including the newest painkilling drugs, antibiotics, and chemotherapeutic agents. This militaristic medical solution takes precedence over other strategies that strive to re-establish health through a coalition of forces in order to augment the body’s own defenses. While a minority of doctors voice dissident opinions and propose less invasive treatment strategies, these voices are muted by the medical industrial complex.

The military industrial complex is but a dwarf next to its medical counterpart. In 2002, for instance, the combined profits for the ten largest drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the combined profits for all of the remaining 490 companies ($33.7 billion). Even though Big Pharma couldn’t maintain this same dominating margin in 2003, due to Big Oil getting a shot in the arm in profits from a significant increase in the cost of this commodity, the medical industrial complex is ready, willing, and able to declare a scientifically validated victory, even if this victory is temporary or simply provides symptomatic relief.

In fact, the shock and awe treatment “works” so that doctors proudly declare: “Mission Accomplished.”

However, much to our surprise, but obvious and predictable to many others, thousands of new “terrorist cells” are created. The shock and awe use of drugs create their own side effects. The painkilling drugs kill the pain but do not cure the underlying disease and create their own tolerance, addiction, and pathology. Antibiotics kill the bad germs but also destroy the good bacteria in our gut that are so important for digesting and assimilating our food. And the chemotherapeutic drugs poison and ravage the immune system, creating a perfect environment for new organisms to infect an increasingly weakened and susceptible body.

However, side effects are not really “side” effects at all. From a pharmacological point of view, determining which “effects” a drug has and which are its “side effects” are arbitrarily determined. Does a bomb that destroys buildings and kills people have one or the other as a “side effect?” Both are the direct effect of the bomb.

Likewise, drugs may effectively suppress a symptom, but the cough we have is the way that the body was trying to clear its bronchial passageway so that you can breath, and our fever is a vital innate strategy that the body deploys to burn out infective organisms. Although the drugs provide helpful temporary relief (and bless them for that), they also tend to suppress the body’s own self-healing propensities and disrupt our inner ecology. Side effects and collateral damage are simply accepted as the price of our war on disease, even if varied strategies for creating the peace are inadequately explored.

Doctors may even be able to go the next step and surgically remove a symptom or an obstructive agent, but the assumption that removing a single symptom or pathological agent will create health is both simplistic and incorrect. Getting rid of a symptom, simply toppling a statue of the person, or capturing a political leader doesn’t create a cure or a revolution. As it turns out, conventional medicine often has no real tools with which to deal with the more complex problems at play…or simply has no plan to establish health once one symptom is removed.

The nursery rhyme about the fall of Humpty Dumpty may provide important insights. This old verse acknowledges, “All my King’s horses and all my King’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” Despite this unsuccessful effort, no one recommend the requisition of more horses and more men to solve this problem.

Our medical generals, however, have not been as insightful, and instead a “surge” in military efforts has been prescribed. Typically, solutions to health problems have been the call for more doctors (and more specialists), more drugs (newer and more expensive ones), and more surgery (after all, medical insurance and the increasing national debt will cover it). And if and when critics assert otherwise, they are branded as unpatriotic…or worse, as unscientific. It is as though we are living under a “doctatorship.”

But now that the body is seriously ravaged, we are told that we cannot just leave the body on its own. Physicians assert that it is essential that we be there to defend it against new attacks, even if our very presence creates the new increasingly more dramatic terrorist actions, a situation is akin to the increased risk of exposure to virulent strains of infection from hospitals today.

Strategies that nourish or nurture the body’s wisdom, treatments that stimulate or augment our inner doctor, and therapeutic modalities that help to establish a dynamic balance between the body-mind-nature are simply called quackery. This name-calling is a wonderfully clever way to trivialize something potentially useful and important. And ironically, physicians often attack these alternative healing systems even though they have an inadequate understanding of what they really are, what history of use and efficacy that they been shown to have, or the high satisfaction rate that exists for their use by the public. The fact that physicians maintain such an unscientific attitude towards these alternative, complementary, and integrative treatment modalities is part and parcel of our “my country right or wrong” and “our medical care right or wrong” thinking.

It is now time to acknowledge and understand how much military thinking has invaded and occupied our medical thinking. And more important, it is time to explore new thinking to medical and military problems so that we can create greater health and peace.

My colleague in this health transformation journey, Dr. Alejandro Junger, shares his view on Detox. Tell it how it is Dr. Clean!

I just finished reading the latest about how celebrities “detox,”–pretty much by starving themselves. I cringe when I see these articles. What other group of people could make deprivation seem attractive?

Seriously, what really concerns me is that these extreme programs are misleading. You simply cannot “detox your body” in seven days–or even seventy –no matter what you do. The topic of detox is intriguing, whether you are viewing it from a drug or alcohol perspective, or just looking for a solution to your health, weight, and energy challenges. We live in a world where our food and atmosphere contain toxic chemicals, and we truly don’t know what effects this may have on our health. Even so, we want to be healthy. We don’t want to be paranoid, but, at the same time, we don’t want to be in denial.

There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding the subject of detox. The truth is, we don’t know everything. We are living in an unprecedented time on the planet in terms of toxins. Our bodies are designed to deal with toxins on a regular basis. In theory, we shouldn’t need to do anything special. Our body has the wisdom to filter out toxins effectively. However, there has been no period like this before in history with such an extreme amount of toxic influences.

An important basic point to remember is that out bodies are built to detoxify. Your body is made up of approximately 100 trillion cells. A basic function is to take in nutrients and eliminate wastes. You are always detoxing. That’s what cells do. Right now you are detoxing. Whether you are on a “detox program” or not, your body is detoxing. You breathe in air, you breathe out carbon dioxide. You eat and drink, you eliminate waste. You sweat. You can’t escape 24/7 detoxification.

Where do toxins actually come from? External toxins come from air pollution, food additives, pesticides and other industrial toxins, cleaning products, personal care items, etc. Internal toxins include the by-products of the normal metabolism that your body undergoes on a regular basis.

So when we talk about detoxification for health, we are really looking at the question of: “How efficiently are my detoxification systems working?” The reality is that we don’t know completely.

Skeptics of our ability to enhance the body’s detoxification processes may say that our liver and kidneys do a great job of getting rid of toxins naturally. But to say that our bodies automatically remove toxic residues completely no matter what we eat, drink, smoke or are exposed to in our environment just doesn’t make sense. Still, we have so much more to learn and study about how the chemicals of our time are affecting us.

For the skeptic, I would point out that there are many studies showing that our bodies store toxic levels of chemicals. There is not one single study that I have found to prove that our bodies efficiently eliminate all of these toxic chemicals.

There is evidence that environmental chemicals are being stored in human body tissues. Environmental health expert, Laurine Brown, PhD, MPH has summarized some of these studies in her article, “What’s Your Chemical Body Burden?” She references the Centers for Disease Control’s Second National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, which analyzed the blood and urine levels of 116 chemicals in a sampling of some 2,500 Americans ages 6 and older. The CDC found toxic residues in virtually every sample tested. And that is just blood and urine. Over time, toxic residues accumulate in our fat tissue as well. This accumulation has been linked to numerous health concerns.

The World Health Organization released a statement that cancer will overtake heart disease as the number one global health killer by 2010. I don’t deny that the cause of cancer is multifactorial, but a leading cause is toxic chemicals, whether from smoking, pesticides, or industrial chemicals.

We could naively think that our government is thoroughly testing chemicals that are not safe for us and removing them from the marketplace. Unfortunately we know this is not the case. A recent congressional audit has found that the EPA has failed miserably in assessing the toxic effects of chemicals on public health. A fascinating article from the Journal Sentinel reveals the disturbing details of the audit. (This newspaper has been chronicling the EPA’s failures to adequately inform the public about toxic chemicals in its series “Chemical Fallout,” which started back in 2007.) The report acknowledged that “The EPA lacks the adequate scientific information on the toxicity of many chemicals that may be found in the environment, as well as tens of thousands of chemicals used commercially in the United States.” According to the article, Lisa Jackson, the EPA’s new administrator, “promised to take the report under consideration.”

The Environmental Working Group reports that the EPA called off a severely misguided study in 2005 that “would have paid families $970 to videotape their children after exposing them to pesticides and other dangerous chemicals.” (This one’s a shocker.) Beyond the wacky thinking behind this approach, the proposed study illustrates how looking into the problem of toxins is not a simple matter.

Bottom line: Research on the subject of detoxification is not only limited, it can be downright inaccurate, flawed, and/or skewed.

Who can you trust? The Environmental Working Group, and their Human Toxome Project. Through this project, the EWG is working to determine “the scope of industrial pollution in humanity.” Both toxins that come from pollution and everyday consumer products are included in their research.

What Can We Do?

Often “doing a detox” is initiated by the desire to lose weight, or to recover after falling off the wagon with sugar, junk food, etc. In these cases, the quick-fix cleanse ideas seem appealing. If they get people to re-think health habits by having them abstain from foods that are unhealthy, that part is great.

What is mostly promoted to the public is in the form of pills, potions, 7-day plans, etc. The problem with this approach is that the marketing materials often mislead the consumer to think that they have actually “rid themselves of toxins.” Impossible!

So how do we find out about the actual amount of toxicity in our body? It’s not easy and it’s not cheap. A National Geographic reporter put himself though the process, and he wrote a fascinating piece about the experience. The testing he underwent would normally have cost a whopping $15,000! Unfortunately assessing toxins and their effect on health is not yet part of standard medical care.

The ability of our bodies to detoxify efficiently is based on multiple factors. These include genetics, one’s individual toxic exposure, and the availability of nutrients essential for the detoxification process.

I firmly believe that we have to combine science with basic common sense. Quick-fix detox programs can promote the on-again-off-again mentality. They appeal to the same crowd that gravitates towards extreme weight-loss diets. Instead, we need a sensible day-to-day approach in both areas.

The topic of how to safely remove toxins from your body or how to increase your body’s ability to break down and eliminate toxins is a lengthy subject. Volumes have been written about it, and the new research and information is constantly coming forward.

With all this in mind, here are 5 tips for approaching detoxification sensibly.

1. Avoid extremes. Especially avoid following the latest celebrity detox that you’ve read about in the tabloids. Instead, educate yourself about the least-toxic choices when it comes to buying personal care items, food, cleaning products, etc. Make these changes gradually and see what fits within your budget. Follow the 10 tips in a previous Huffington Post piece, “Spring Cleaning: 10 Steps To Bring New Life To Your Liver.” Increasing water intake alone can have profound positive effects. Look for basic common sense info about habits that support the natural detoxification processes in your body on a regular basis. Let your lifestyle be one that is supportive of your body’s natural ability to detox.

2. Have a “detox focus” periodically. There’s nothing wrong with having a periodic (such as seasonal, e.g. spring) time when you give special attention and acknowledgement to your body’s detoxification mechanics. We all get a little off-track occasionally, and sometimes we need a plan laid out before us to get started again. Some may choose a week or two to purposely avoid alcohol, refined sugar, red meat, etc., while emphasizing a more plant-based diet. That can be a great start, and I personally prefer the plans that incorporate healthy, non-toxic foods to the fasting programs.

3. Make sure your nutrient intake is optimal. Virtually all vitamins and minerals are involved in the daily detoxification process. That’s one of the reason you’ll want to ensure that you are getting optimal amounts of all essential nutrients, especially the vitamins C, E, and B complex as well as the minerals zinc, magnesium, and selenium. Herbs such as milk thistle and schizandra, as well as the nutrient alpha lipoic acid have demonstrated antioxidant properties and the ability to protect the liver from toxins.

4. Seek professional advice for special conditions. If you have a medical condition that you believe would warrant a medically supervised detoxification protocol, please do not attempt to do it on your own. You could waste your time and money, and most importantly, put your health in jeopardy. Find a healthcare practitioner who is current on detoxification research, testing, and protocols. Be wary of a practitioner who throws a bunch of supplements at you without substantiating the reasons, as well as one who doesn’t think you need vitamins at all.

5. Take it slow. For some, the idea of detoxification may be new and feel overwhelming. Please don’t stress out! I recommend gradually making more and more non-toxic choices over time. If you push yourself too fast and hard to make the changes, stress hormones could literally add to the toxic load your body has to process. Having peace of mind is as invaluable a support for detoxification as anything. Follow Michelle Obama’s lead and plant an organic garden. Gardening is good for the fresh nutritious foods it supplies as well as nourishment for the soul!

Taking this sensible approach certainly doesn’t seem as glamorous or intriguing as the latest “lose 15 pounds in 15 days” celebrity detox. But the payoff is much better. Eating healthy and reducing your toxic exposure over time can often result in increased health and vitality, better moods, and sharper mental focus–adding life to your years, as well as years to your life.

Of course I do when I feel it is appropriate. For instance, the other day, a patient came in with a sudden onset of fever, chills and symptoms of a urinary tract infection. Because a urinary tract infection can spread to the kidneys with serious consequences, I immediately started her on antibiotics. But most patients come to me with chronic problems like headaches, indigestion, depression or fatigue. And these issues cannot be resolved with antibiotics or drugs.

What I’ve learned over the years is to see these type of symptoms as pointers to some underlying imbalance in the system that needs to be corrected.

If I correct the imbalance, the symptoms usually go away. So, instead of rushing to use drugs to suppress the symptom, I look to see what the underlying dysfunction or imbalance is and if possible try remove the cause.

For instance if you have heartburn, taking a drug like Nexium will help the symptom but not treat the underlying imbalance nor the cause. And if you don’t deal with what is causing the heartburn, you will need to stay on the Nexium indefinitely, which is what the drug companies want. But this is not good for your health as you are removing the cause and correcting the problem. So you are bound to have other consequences later on and in addition, most drugs have side effects especially if taken over a long period.

I think it is important to realize that suppressing symptoms may be necessary short term but is not a long term solution. Heartburn is not a Nexium deficiency, headaches are not a Tylenol deficiency and insomnia is not an Ambien deficiency. These are all warning signals your body is giving you that something is out of balance. Listen to your body!

So, yes, I do use drugs when I feel it is appropriate, especially for acute short lived problems like bacterial infections. But for all chronic problems, I will always look for the underlying imbalances and possible causes and will try less aggressive treatment modalities first. As we Physicians all learn at medical school, “First, Do no Harm.”

Functional Medicine is a true combination of Chinese Medicine, Western Medicine and scientific research. It combines the philosophy of balance and how to restore function from Chinese Medicine and the knowledge of biochemistry and physiology of Western Medicine with the latest scientific research about how our genetics, environment and lifestyle all interact with each other. Functional medicine focuses assessment and intervention at the root levels of metabolic imbalance and is an evolution in the practice of medicine that addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century by focusing on prevention and uncovering the underlying causes of serious chronic disease. Instead of just suppressing symptoms, it deals with the root causes of disease and is less concerned with making a diagnosis and more concerned with the underlying imbalances, which are the mechanisms of the disease process.

For instance, in the last 2 weeks, 3 people came to see me complaining of reflux and all had been given Nexium by their Doctor. But for one of them, the cause was his diet and eliminating the foods that caused the problem did the trick. For the second person, giving her probiotics and nutrients to heal the lining of the gastro-intestinal system helped and for the third person, giving him HCL, yes you read correctly, giving him Hydrochloric Acid tablets to help digestion helped. All 3 had different causes and needed to be treated accordingly.

As opposed to Western Medicine, Functional medicine treats the patient and not the disease. In addition, it provides a framework for the practice of medicine that uses all the tools of healing, both conventional and alternative, to address the whole person rather than an isolated set of symptoms. I have studied Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine which taught me to see the body from a holistic perspective. Now Functional Medicine gives me a framework to combine this with a Western understanding of the body.

I feel blessed to have met Jeff Bland, who pioneered Functional Medicine over 20 years ago, and been exposed to his brilliant teachings. What started as lectures by Jeff has now turned into a burgeoning movement, with an Institute of Functional Medicine, a faculty and textbook to teach interested Practitioners. I am proud to be part of this new medicine movement as it provides a timely new way of thinking about prevention, public health, wellness and the treatment of chronic disease that can lead to better outcomes and lower healthcare costs.

For more information, go to Functional Medicine.org

Recently Newsweek did a hatchet job on Oprah and Alternative Medicine in general for spreading “dubious advice” on a wide range of health topics. The piece also criticized my good friend Chris Northrup MD for warning Oprah’s audience of the HPV vaccine and recommending dietary and lifestyle changes to enhance their natural immunity instead.

2 articles I read about in the Newsweek piece basically articulate my feelings on all of this. Obviously the powers that be, who do not want the system to change and the Pharmaceutical Industry, which has close ties to Newsweek and the media in general are behind this.

The Vueweekly article I recommend you read ends with this great quote by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, which is so true.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

There seems to be a disturbing trend occurring, with a recent blitz of media articles seeking to put a bad spin on Alternative Medicine and anything Natural or not accepted by the system. We have passed through the first stage and are in the midst of the second stage, so hold on to your horses.

Be sure to check out the 2 articles I mentioned:

• Vue Weekly: Crazy Talk
• Huffington Post: Deepak Chopra