Jun 24, 2009
Functional Medicine
Dr. Mark Harmon has a great piece in the Huffington Post discussing what he calls Functional Medicine or UltraWellness. He explains that, while mainstream medicine helps at “the very end stages of disease” and for acute emergencies, raging infections, broken bones, etc, it does little to address chronic illnesses or to ameliorate the long-term conditions or lifestyles that lead to serious illness.
But when I worked in the emergency room, I felt I was saving people just before (or sometimes after) they were washed DOWNSTREAM and over the waterfall to their death.
I began to wonder what led them to this point — what happened UPSTREAM in the process of disease and illness. What were the real causes of disease? If I could answer that question, then I thought I might be able to help prevent disease in the first place.
Harmon addresses the many signs of a failing heathcare system:
Chronic diseases affect 133 million Americans. That means in the average family of three, at least one person has a chronic disease. We are seeing an epidemic of autoimmune (24 million Americans), allergic (50 million Americans), and asthmatic (30 million Americans) diseases in this country. In addition, 20 percent of Americans (about 60 million people) have irritable bowel syndrome.
In fact, the rates of nearly every modern disease — autoimmune diseases, allergic diseases, digestive problems, heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and dementia–are increasing. One in three children born today will have type 2 diabetes. One in two people over age 85 will develop dementia.
Then he outlines 7 principles of functional medicine:
- First, we must understand how everything in our environment interacts with our genes to create health or disease, especially our diet and nutritional status. Air, water, microorganisms, exercise, trauma, psychosocial factors, environmental toxins and radiation also affect our genes and our health.
- Second, we must understand how our hormones and brain chemistry influence nearly every aspect of our health, why they get out of balance, and how to get them back in balance.
- Third, we must understand how most of us have smoldering hidden inflammation that will kill us until we learn how to control it.
- Fourth, we must understand that our digestive system is at the core of our health, why it breaks down, and how to repair it.
- Fifth, we must understand how toxins and problems with our detoxification or waste management systems lead to chronic health problems and how to optimize this detoxification system.
- Sixth, we must understand the importance of energy — how we make it, why we lose it, and how to create more of it.
- And finally, we must understand how the mind interacts with the body and how the body interacts with the mind to influence and affect each of our other systems.
This is an excellent foundation for understanding what I call CommonHealth or soft-care. The only thing that I would immediately add is the social dimension — the ways that individual health is affected by other people, by one’s relationships and one’s standing in society.
Michael Sky | CommonHealth
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