What is Whole Health?

Let's take a (mini) deep dive into why we must consider the health of our digestive and immune systems first when working toward resolving health conditions at their roots, and restoring balance within (and among) all body systems.

We can think of our bodies as mobiles. When each part of a mobile is doing its "job" (in this case, when all the parts of the mobile are weighted properly, and are in the right position), the mobile functions beautifully, and is in equilibrium. However, when one component is compromised, the whole mobile is thrown out of balance and can no longer function optimally. This is true of our bodies as well. Each one of our body systems must be doing its job sufficiently in order to establish and support a vital and optimally functioning bio-ecosystem.

Even when symptoms are persisting in one isolated area, and it would seem that only the related body system is in question, there are always other body systems contributing to both cause and effect, especially (and almost without any doubt) our digestive system.

Being that food is our energy source and that which gives us life, and we must not only eat our food, but digest it and absorb its nutrients in order to promote life, we must consider the digestive system first when working toward whole health. Just as life-affirming health begins through the alchemy of this system, so can disease if the digestive system is not functioning optimally.

Many factors can be the cause, or can contribute to the cause, of the digestive system not functioning optimally, including poor diet, eating our food too quickly, not chewing our food well enough, consuming food to which we have allergies or intollerances, low stomach acid, AND the myriad influences that could compromise our all-important gut microbiome, which is not only vital to the health of the digestive system, but to that of many other body systems.

Our gut microbiome is an innate inhabitant of our digestive system. It consists of trillions of microorganisms (mostly bacteria, but some fungi, viruses and protozoa too) that impact our health significantly, as the microbes play integral roles in biological processes such as gut function, digestion, nutrition, metabolism, immunity, balancing hormones, liver function, cardiovascular health, mental health, sleep and more!

Diet, lifestyle and environmental factors play HUGE roles in determining the state of our microbiomes. Among the trillions of microbes that we have, there are benificial ones (the "good" guys) and opportunistic ones (the "bad" guys). Believe it or not we need both, however they must be in proper balance.

Poor diet, antibiotics, lack of sleep and exercise, stress, viruses, parasites, and exposure to environmental toxins (mold, heavy metals, chemicals) can all reduce the number of those good guys, allowing the bad guys to capitalize on the empty real estate and create a detrimental micriobial imbalance, clinically known as Disbiosis.

A state of dysbiosis interferes with the MANY health promoting roles that our microbiomes play, including helping to maintain the integrity of our gut lining. When our gut lining becomes permeable, pathogens, and undigested food particles (unusable by our bodies and unrecognizable to our immune systems) can pass through into our blood streams, triggering our immune system to attack these "invaders."

It's important to note here that there's an incredible symbiosis between the gut microbiome and the immune system. They have coevolved together through time and in fact, 70-80% of our immune system resides in the gut! Starting in the womb (it is now believed), the gut influences the strength and development of the immune system, and the immune system helps form the diversity of the microbiome. Our gut microbiomes and our immune systems depend on one another to function optimally as they work hand in hand to protect our bodies.

Our immune systems create temporary states of inflammation as a natural biproduct of their mechanisms to protect our bodies and help them recover from any insult. However, when we have ongoing insults to our bodies, which SO often can be traced back to gut dysbiosis and problems involving other aspects of the digestive system, chronic states of inflammation can occur. Not only do chronic states of inflammation lead to many other disease states in the body, they overtax the immune system, distracting it from its MANY other vitally important jobs.

As we take all this into consideration, it becomes apparent why we must bring our focus, first and foremost, to the health and well-being of the gut, it's microbiome, the digestive system in its entirety, and the functions of the immune system. Through this approach we are able to strengthen and balance the systems that are foundational to all other body systems, and work from the roots on up towards Whole Health.

How do we Harness Whole Health?

It is so tempting to run toward that "quick-fix" protocol. There are SO many of them at our disposal, and they are so often presented in  clever ways that manipulate us into believing THIS one will work for ME. Moreover, we're vulnerable when we don't feel good, and understandably want to relieve symptoms and feel better as quickly as possible. 

There are two big problems with these "relieve all your symptoms in just 10 days" protocols. First, there is no one size fits all! When two people have identical symptoms, or they have been given the same diagnosis with the same name attached to it, the fact is, the underlying causes of these symptoms and diagnoses are different in each individual. Second, treating (or surpressing) symptoms does not make a health condition go away. It may temporarily do so, but most often the source of the problem, which so often goes unrecognized, will continue to exist and present with symptoms elsewhere in the body.

It is the INDIVIDUAL we want to treat, and the CAUSE we must address.

When we direct our attention toward the cause (or root-cause as it is often put) we are looking for the origins of dis-ease, which allows us to investigate the environments that potentially provoked dis-ease. As noted earlier, the first environments (or areas of the body) that we would focus our attention on first are the digestive and immune systems. 

By doing this, we are able to determine how to nourish and rebalance the these environments. We can consider these environments to be like the soil of a plant. Just as we would tend to the soil of our cherished plants to provide for roots, stems, leaves and flowers that flourish and thrive, we must also do so within our own bodies. To follow with this metaphor, the roots of this beloved plant are like our digestive and immune systems. The soil is all that we are feeding and exposing the roots to—i.e., our diets, lifestyle routines and environments.

Helping you Harness Whole Health through the practices of Functional Nutrition

In order to shed more light on the tenets and practices of Functional Medicine and Function Nutrition, and to highlight the approaches that functional practitioners embrace, I will paraphrase the teachings of Andrea Nakayama, renowned Functional Medicine Nutritionist, educator and speaker (and my mentor). 

Practicing functionally is a mindset—a mindset shift away from standard (allopathic) medical care, which utilizes protocols that work for a certain amount of the population—toward a place of personalized care. 

FUNCTIONAL PRACTITIONERS AIM TO BRING HEALTHCARE BACK TO THE INDIVIDUAL.

Practicing functionally calls upon the practitioner to readily enter into a dynamic dance of discovery—to investigate, comprehend and act on what's unique and particular to the person sitting in front of them. 

Integral to practicing functionally is helping each client learn how to listen to their body, understand what's going on beneath the surface of presenting symptoms, and become their own greatest detective so they may champion their own course. 

Along these lines, functional practitioners embrace the belief that we all have far greater success when we begin to understand WHY we are doing something instead of simply being told WHAT to do. 

Practicing functionally involves looking at how our bodies have been impacted by our personal histories and our methods of self care. 

Diet and lifestyle choices are stimuli from which we learn a great deal by seeing how are bodies respond to them. This is where food and lifestyle practices meet physiology, yielding very different responses for each individual. 

FUNCTIONAL PRACTITIONERS DO NOT PRETEND TO KNOW THE ANSWERS, INSTEAD THEY WORK TO UNEARTH THEM.

Functional practitioners use tools that help map a client's personal history and track a client's choices and daily practices in order to step into their habits, patterns and behaviors. 

A functional practitioner works with humility, curiosity and compassion—utilizing frameworks (rather than protocols) that are evolving and dynamic—allowing for creative problem solving and real-time personalized care. 

THE BODY IS DYNAMIC AND THE PRACTITIONER MUST BE AS WELL!

Functional nutritionists work behind the scenes of the doctors (functional and allopathic), in partnership with their clients. They embrace an even greater "hands on" approach to adjust everyday practices, and transcend a client's relationship to their diet and lifestyle choices. 

In this sense, Functional Nutritionists become the bridge between what's going on in the doctor's office and what's going on at home.