pan, of each patient. Remember Jack LaLane? In my mind the “fi rst fi tness superhero” lived the ideal health span. At age 70, he towed 70 rowboats one mile through rough waters against strong wind and current. While handcuffed and shackled. Talk about organ reserve!


Here’s what it comes down to: Functional Medicine practitio-


ners strive to fi x the root cause of the problem rather than simply covering up symptoms with pills. That’s what I really mean when someone asks me what kind of doctor I am.


Now, what about the Meaning of Life? For me, it’s: Be Happy and Make the World a Little Better.


I fi nd the most happiness by


helping others. This realization led me at an early age toward a medical career. As I worked my way through medical school, I began to notice the limitations of allopathic or conventional medi- cine.


Allopathic Medicine Allopathic medicine is based on the “Reductionist Principle”.


If you look closely enough at any disease, you’ll eventually fi nd some chemical process that has gone awry. If you can discover an- other chemical (i.e., a drug) that alters this process, you can reduce the symptoms of the disease. Sometimes this works great…if you have a bacterial infection; you want to kill the bacteria with anti- biotics. But where the Reductionist Principle falls short is chronic illness. Obesity, Diabetes Mellitus, Cardiovascular Disease, Cancer, Dementia...there is no One Pill To Fix It solution for the diseases that kill most of us and cost the most money to care for.


Conventional medicine is powerful -- if I’m in a bad car ac-


cident, I want to go to the hospital -- but it can be plain lousy at helping people be healthy. As a young medical student I knew that Family Doctors deal mostly with long-term, chronic illness. My conventional medical education taught me boatloads about pharmaceutically-driven disease care but almost nothing about health care. In four years of medical school I had one lecture on nutrition...and that was how to order IV food for patients in a coma! Sadly this is the norm for Medical Doctors. If I was going to help people (and Be Happy and Make the World a Little Better), I needed more tools for my toolbox than just my prescription pad.


Integrative Medicine As I began to explore additional training, I was confused at fi rst


by terms like Holistic, Complementary, and Alternative as opposed to Conventional, Western, or Allopathic Medicine. I prefer the term Integrative Medicine, which uses the most effective solutions from all these modalities. Over the next several years I sought elective education in nutritional science, mind-body techniques, biofeed- back therapies, and anything else I thought would help. Each step of my journey taught me more about treating my patient as a whole human being, about being a detective doctor, and about true Heal- ing.


Functional Medicine cleverly ties all these concepts into a model of care that made sense to my scientifi c-yet-holistic brain. When I need to prescribe drugs, I will. They are powerful and can quickly calm an out-of-control situation. But they have their drawbacks as well. Functional Medicine is an Integrative Medicine approach, using a personalized blend of healthy lifestyle changes, therapeutic diets, prescribed pharmaceuticals and/or nutraceuticals (i.e., botanical medicines), detoxifi cation programs, biofeedback techniques, and other treatments.


www.EssentialLivingMaine.com 19


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36