The more I learn about medicine, the more I’m amazed at how people think nothing of taking several drugs, for the rest of their lives. When I was young, if we got sick, we went to the doctor, were given drugs for two weeks and we improved. But, now I realize how many people are on prescriptions that they think are for a lifetime.
There has to be a better way.
Researching some of the most common prescriptions, it was disturbing to find that some are only recommended for short term use to solve an immediate problem, but the long term solution is diet and exercise. But, I see patients everyday that are taking these medications long term, though there is substantial evidence of their damaging long term side effects.
High cholesterol medication is one example. Statins have been shown to cause diabetes. This class of drugs is only approved for short term use until the patient can change their diet sufficiently to effect the body, but most people are never taken off these medications.
Furthermore, what is the underlying cause of high cholesterol? Genetics, diet, exercise, liver dysfunction?
My discovery is that each patient is different and the cause of their high cholesterol is very specific to their body. Some patients have high cardiovascular markers that indicate the blood vessels have damage and this explains why the cholesterol is high – the body uses the cholesterol to heal the damaged vessels. Meanwhile another patient has high markers for liver dysfunction and the liver makes all the cholesterol in the blood stream. So, supporting the liver would seem like the most logical treatment, not using drugs that stress the liver further.
So, in functional medicine, we send the person with high cardiovascular markers to the laboratory for further testing to determine what is damaging the vessels. The possibilities are: the patient is encountering something harmful to the vessels, or; the patient is deficient in something the body needs to heal this damage. This may be high blood sugar, allergies, pollutants, heavy metals, deficiencies in Vitamin C, D, amino acids, magnesium, CoQ10 or exercise.
Once the results come in and the causes are known, then the patient is treated with changes to decrease the harmful causes and supplement the deficiencies. Many patients have had fantastic results improving their cholesterol numbers using this Medical Detective methodology. And many other dysfunctions.
Functional Medicine is being the Medical Detective and investigating the underlying causes so the treatments will help with the cause, not just the symptoms.
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