Is a functional medicine doctor better than “normal” doctors? Dr. Muth shares what a functional medicine practitioner is and when and how they should be used.
Do not miss these highlights:
[1:34] Learning to tune into your body with Functional Medicine
[2:10] Functional Medicine may help you seek answers when traditional medicine doesn’t seem to provide enough of an answer
{3:51] Alternative treatments to depression or anxiety when they are caused by inflammation or nutrition
[5:03 – 15:16] Strategies you can use for self-care and feel better including elimination diet, meditation, sleep and exercise
[15:18] Why you would access a Functional Medicine Provider
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Transcription of Episode #94: “When do you need a functional medicine provider?”
Hi, everybody, this episode is brought to you by my very own Phoenix Factor coaching program. Look, we are all trying to create that absolute perfect life. Let me show you how to do that for free in my virtual coaching strategy call, you and I are going to spend 20 minutes chatting about your desires where you want to take your business life, your health, and of course, your sex life. And then I’m going to give you tips and ideas and techniques on how to actually get that going for 2020. So you can have that absolutely perfect, amazing life you’re looking for. Now, it’s super simple. All you need to do is click on my calendly link here in the podcast notes. And hop on pick your time, and let’s start creating that amazing life that you’re looking for.
0:58
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now. I’m your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms.
You are listening to Let’s Talk Wellness Now podcast and I’m your host, Dr. Deb. Today I want to talk to you about functional medicine. You know, functional medicine isn’t a replacement for your family doctor, but rather something that adds to your overall health. It helps you improve upon issues and start reclaiming your health by learning how to tune into your body. Ask yourself the right questions. Don’t ditch your physical exams. You know, typically functional medicine practitioners don’t act as somebody’s primary care physician. And they don’t do the typical physical exam that you’re used to having. That’s not their role in your healthcare, their role in your healthcare is to be a specialist for you. Their role is to think outside the box and give you things that you can’t get from the traditional health care system. You know, for people as we’re aging, and who have autoimmune diseases, or have inflammatory flare ups, digestive issues, hormonal issues, chronic health issues, like chronic symptoms that nobody can explain for you. Chronic side effects of things that nobody can tell you why you eat a certain food and why you feel a certain way. You’ve had all your traditional exams, and you’re still constipated, you’re still bloated, you still have diarrhea, you still have fatigue, or anxiety or depression. And you don’t know why or where these things are coming from. And your family doctor is telling you the only thing you need honey is an antidepressant and everything will be fine. That’s what you need a functional medicine provider for those are the things that a functional medicine provider can help you with. Or if you’re looking to defy aging, and live an anti-aging lifestyle , where you’re looking, feeling and acting 20 years younger than you are because you feel amazing, and you look amazing. That’s what a functional medicine provider is for. Because we finally get to the root of what’s causing your symptoms, which is ultimately an inflammatory response. But we look for the problem, look for the cause. We don’t look for the symptom, we don’t look for which drug that we can pair up to what symptom you have, we look for the root cause.
3:51
Now, for those of you who suffer from depression and anxiety, it’s the leading cause of disabilities in the US. And yes, inflammation could be a possibility for this. But it could also be simply a nutritional issue where you’re not absorbing enough proteins from your or not absorbing enough amino acids from your proteins. And therefore you’re being depleted and your neurotransmitters aren’t being made to the degree that they should be. It could be a food sensitivity, it could be a chronic illness or a chronic chronic infection, like epstein barr virus, or Lyme disease or a herpes family virus. It’s amazing what these things can do to your body. It’s amazing on how you can feel with some of these things. So it’s a really good reason for us to look at why we want to reduce inflammation, because we don’t want to trigger an inflammatory response in the body and create an autoimmune condition. We don’t want to create any conditions. So the more we can keep that inflammatory response under control, the more we can prevent how related illnesses as we age.
5:03
And I think it’s okay for us to look at these health related issues and try to figure out how to address them. Because there’s so much of what we can do from eating and sleeping, and taking supplements to give you an opportunity to be super wealthy and super healthy at the same time. Now, if you’re feeling this way, here are some tips that you can do to start feeling better, you can try what we call an elimination diet, to get to the root of which foods make you feel bad, you focus on nutrient dense foods, healing foods, and then-so you’re going to eliminate all the junk, get rid of all the processed foods, you want to stick with Whole Foods, and preferably if you can, organic, because that takes the mystery out of whether or not there’s chemicals on your food that are making you sick, or is it actually the food that’s making you sick. Once you start with basic foods, you want to reintroduce foods one at a time and find those culprits that make you feel poorly, that give you joint pain, or muscle pain, or brain fog, or constipation or diarrhea, or depression and anxiety. You know, a lot of times foods are the culprit for an inflammatory response, especially in making our bodies hurt more arthritic symptoms, brain fog and fatigue. Foods can be a big part of that. So just because somebody says You shouldn’t have to eliminate a food, don’t listen to that. Don’t be normal, be you. You know, everybody can tell us you’re not living life if you don’t have that Coke, or you don’t have that ice cream, or you don’t have that cake, but you know what they don’t live in your body. And if your body says, I don’t feel well, when I have that cake, I don’t feel well, when I have that nut or that meat or whatever it is. Don’t do it, it’s not worth you’re feeling poor, to make somebody else feel comfortable with how you’re eating. It doesn’t matter, it only matters how you feel. So in general, you know, foods are a big problem for us. Sugars, grains, canola, soy beans, all of these things can cause problems for us. Life, healthy lifestyle habits are hard to do. They’re hard to change. And that’s why every year at New Year’s, we create a new New Year’s resolution, right? We vow that we’re going to give up sugar or we’re going to give up alcohol or we’re going to start exercising more, and you’re going to eat healthier, you’re going to have more salads, you’re going to have more this, it is difficult. And many times we fall off the wagon, and many times we have to get back up again. And that’s totally fine. Do it as many times as you have to. But start simple. Don’t go all in, you know, don’t throw everything out in your pantry, make one change at a time and get successful with that change. And then once you’ve gotten successful with that change, then you can make the next change and the next change and so forth, and you can continue to move on. But if you try to do everything at one time, it’s just so overwhelming, that you tend to fail. And then you give in. And once you give in, then it’s all hell down, right? And so don’t do that, just go a little bit at a time. And that little bit at a time aspect is going to help you really build to be successful, and build to be strong in what you’re doing.
8:56
You know, once you’ve got your foods under control, then let’s start looking at other things like maybe relaxation and meditation and stress reduction, right. So as I’m recording this podcast for you guys, today, I have the opportunity to be looking out of my office window. And I hung a bird feeder there during the summer, because I love watching the birds and if I have to work I want to see something really fun. And I want to see something really beautiful. And today as I’m recording this podcast, there’s a beautiful male Cardinal sitting out here on my feeder and I’m getting a chance to just enjoy watching them fly around and sit and relax. And it reminds me to think that that’s how we’re meant to be. We’re meant to sit back relax, take a step. Not be rushing all the time not be going and doing all the time. We need time to connect with nature, connect with ourselves, connect with our partners. You know, we’re really meant to be somebody who is not always on the go. So you know, one of the things that you want to do is do that mindful activity where you de stress yourself, do those things that give you pleasure, whatever that is, you know, for some of you, it may be exercise. For others, it may be reading a book, for some of you, it may be travel, do whatever it is that makes you unwind from the craziness of the world that we have.
10:40
So, another tip for you for self care, is sleep. You know, sleep is so incredibly important and we’ve done episodes full episodes on sleep before. And if there was one anti aging hack that I would give you, it’s around sleep. And if you can get good quality, sleep and rejuvenatory sleep, and you need seven to eight hours of sleep, I don’t care if you tell me that you can run on four to five hours. And you’ve always been that way. It’s not healthy people, it’s really not. And I used to be one of those people who prided themselves on running on six hours of sleep and could burn the candle at both ends. But let me tell you, it catches up with you. It comes upon you very quickly. And you don’t realize it until your body talks loud enough that something’s not working for you anymore. And guess what, it never did work for you. We just tried to convince ourselves that it worked, but it never did. So really get some healthy good sleep. One of the things that I’m playing with right now is a menopausal nighttime patch from patch MD. And I want to see if the ingredients in there can help me stay asleep longer, get deeper restorative sleep. And if I don’t have as many hot flashes at night when I’m sleeping. And so far day one, I slept like a baby last night. And I’m always looking for things that will help me sleep. Many of you have heard me talk about human growth hormone from Soma Derm. Before that is a beautiful thing to help you sleep. It’s a great anti aging tool. It’s one of my favorite hacks that I do. But I’m always looking for new things, I’m always willing to try new things. So I will keep you posted on the patch MD thing. And let you know what I think of that patch and some of their other nutrient patches and see how absorption goes, you know, the less we can put inside sometimes the better it is a lot of my clients say I can’t take another pill, don’t give me another pill. So we’re looking for different ways that we can absorb nutrients, and we can absorb vitamins and get what we need without having to pop another pill.
12:58
So I want to talk a little bit too about exercise because it’s so important for us and the New Year is coming. And a lot of you are getting ready to talk about your plan for the new year. And what are you going to focus on in 2021. And we all hope and pray that 2021 is better than 2020, because it’s been a crazy ride for a lot of us. And the only way it’s going to be better is if we make it better, right? If we make choices that are best for us, and we do things that help us get better and get healthy and get strong. And exercise as a part of that. It’s a great stress reduction, reduction, reduction. Sorry, it’s great for stress reduction. It’s great for clearing our minds, it’s great for a way to maintain our weight. And everybody needs to be physically active. The more physical we are, the better we are. Now I’m not saying go out and run a five k if you haven’t been working out. You know, I’m a big fan of yoga, I love yoga, I think it’s one of the best things that we can do. Stretching and relaxation and deep breathing. It is one of my favorite things to do. Although I don’t do it as often as I used to. It is on my list for 2021 to add back into my general exercise plan so that I can be more flexible in 2021. In not doing it for the last year, I’ve realized that my flexibility has really declined. And I don’t like that I want to be flexible and as as flexible as I can for as long as I can. So that’s a really important thing. With COVID happening and gyms shut down and not having the ability to exercise the way we did before, we’re going to need to get creative. We’re going to need to find ways that we can do exercise differently than we’ve done before. But in all in all, I think it’s a fantastic way for us to look at how do we stay healthy longer, you know, get with nature, take a walk, walk your dog do all these wonderful things that keep us healthy and strong. And that is a great tool.
15:18
Now I want to just briefly talk about how to use your functional medicine provider because we talked about what to use them for. But let’s talk about why you would use them. You want to use them, when your other practitioners cannot find anything else wrong with you and you have symptoms, you want to use them when you want to do anti aging hacks. You want to use them when you have an autoimmune disorder, because we’re going to look at that differently than your traditional doctor does. And you want to use them when you want to protect your DNA. So we haven’t talked on this podcast about genetics. But we have talked on another podcast with Dr. Ashley about genetics. And you should tune into that whole episode if you’re interested in learning how to hack your genetics, because this is a way that’s going to keep you younger longer, and keep you stronger. So I hope you guys have enjoyed us talking about how and when to use your functional medicine provider. And share this episode with people that you know need a functional medicine practitioner or need to understand why you want a functional medicine practitioner on your team. And share this with people who are thinking about changing their lifestyle for 2021 because it’s going to be a great time for them to start looking at things and implementing new hacks into their 2020 lifestyle.
16:51
Hey it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the Let’s Talk Wellness Now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review, share this podcast and if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest.