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I get a lot of questions from people about this and oftentimes people misunderstand what it is that I really do.

Oftentimes I get labeled as a Nutritionist which is true to an extent. My education is in food science and human nutrition and I have extensively studied holistic nutrition for more than 10 years. And yes, nutrition is a huge piece of the overall puzzle and without it you’re not going to get lasting results. So there’s definitely a huge advantage to my nutrition background.

But the way I practice involves much more than diet or nutrition alone. I practice Functional Medicine which looks beyond just food and works to determine the underlying cause(s) of your chronic symptoms.

What is Functional Medicine?

(From Wikipedia)

Functional medicine is an emerging field of medicine grounded in the functional application of basic sciences. Some have coined functional medicine as patient-centered medical healing at its best. Instead of looking at and treating health problems as isolated diseases, its focus is on treating individuals who may have bodily symptoms, imbalances and dysfunctions. Functional medicine seeks to identify and address the root causes of disease, and views the body as one integrated system, not a collection of independent organs divided up by medical specialties.

Functional Medicine vs. Conventional Medicine

When dealing with functional medicine, we don’t treat disease or even symptoms. In fact, we don’t treat anything at all.

It is very different from conventional medicine which relies primarily on drugs to suppress or offset the symptoms that the patient is presenting with. For example, prescribing pain killers when pain is present.

Instead functional medicine looks at symptoms as a possible road mad that oftentimes points toward the underlying cause of the problem. And in many cases, this can be verified or further investigated through the use of lab testing.

But in any case, there is always an associated underlying cause of stress on the body. And this stress causes dysfunction among one or more systems (digestive, hormonal, detoxification) within the body. And when the body can’t function properly then it shifts away from health and symptoms begin to develop.

So the key is not to suppress the symptoms but rather determine and remove the underlying cause of stress that that is driving the symptom. If you do this then the body can return to normal homeostatic function and the symptom(s) will disappear on its/their own.

And one of the easiest ways to return homeostatic balance to the body is to provide it with all of the necessary components that it needs to heal and achieve balance.

Are Your Symptoms the Real Problem?

Honestly, no.

Your symptoms are merely a sign or signal from your body that is telling you that something is wrong. But too often people ignore or mask these signals until your body develops more serious symptoms as it moves further and further away from balance and health.

So it’s important to look at your symptoms as a tool to get to the underlying problem instead of as the source of the problem itself.

How This Relates to Leaky Gut Syndrome

When specifically dealing with Leaky Gut Syndrome and gut dysfunction, few people realize that there’s much more involved than the digestive system alone that absolutely needs to be addressed.

Hormonal System: When Leaky Gut develops, your liver becomes sluggish. And one important role of your liver is to process and break down or metabolize some key hormones. So if your liver can’t process these key hormones then they build up in your body and impair both your immune system and your body’s natural ability to heal, your gut included.

Digestive System: When Leaky Gut develops, the entire digestive process becomes impaired. The inflammatory damage to the intestinal lining impairs your ability to produce the necessary enzymes to properly digest and break down your food. And your intestinal lining becomes far less efficient at absorbing nutrients. This leads to nutrient deficiencies and it becomes increasingly more difficult to obtain the necessary nutrients for healing.

Detoxification System: When Leaky Gut develops, the toxic load on your body increases. We already mentioned above that your liver becomes sluggish so it can’t properly process the toxins that it comes into contact with on a daily basis. And oftentimes your colon which is one of the most important detoxification pathways within your body becomes impaired as well. So you lose your ability to properly process and eliminate toxins which instead are left to accumulate and create even more inflammation and damage inside your gut to further worsening your symptoms and condition.

So as you can see, it’s very important to focus on all of the body systems together instead of addressing any single one alone. Otherwise, it becomes increasingly more difficult to heal the gut.

That’s it in a nutshell and hopefully that clears up some common misconceptions about what I do and how I work with Leaky Gut Syndrome.

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