8 Things To Do Before Seeing a Functional MD
How you can save yourself money and get a head start.
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I am constantly amazed by the healing power of the body and the resilience of humans. When I read about the never-ending assaults on the body (microbial, toxic and emotional) it seems a miracle that there are any humans left on earth. Nonetheless here we are, though often less than we could be, burdened by chronic un-wellness.
If you are looking deeper, beyond the prevailing narrative, realizing there must be more to life than being on ten pharmaceuticals by the age of thirty, you may be considering seeing a Functional MD. You may hope to get a test to get to the “root cause” of your ills. This then hopefully leads to treatment and a cure.
No matter what the root cause turns out to be (if this is found), no treatment is effective unless the foundation is strong. Often, all that is needed is to give the body its best chance and, voila, the cure happens.
Introduction
We MDs, clump the symptoms of un-wellness into boxes largely to help us feel that we are making a difference — depression, eczema, social anxiety, insulin resistance, irritable bowel syndrome, autoimmune disease, chronic pain syndrome. With chronic conditions being multifactorial and often complex, one dimensional labels become of little value. Most often the general medical treatment on offer for chronic conditions is (from a functional perspective) woeful.
Generally, there are three actions the body can undertake when responding to an assault on its equilibrium: inflammation, oxidative stress and immune activation. These are crucial when fighting a microbial assault such as malaria or Covid 19, but if the assault never ends (e.g. poor sleep), the inflammation and oxidative stress continue and the immune system becomes dysregulated.
Furthermore, Homo sapiens are accustomed to changes in environment. Sometimes there is lots of food and sometimes none; sometimes it is cold and sometimes it is hot. Trying to live in a constant climate of comfort, food availability and…
