Functional medicine is becoming increasingly popular. But what is it and can it help you? In a markedly different approach than traditional Western medicine, functional medicine seeks to understand how your organs, glands and tissues are functioning, as well as how they can be finely tuned to work in greater harmony together. It has the capacity to appreciate the body and mind as an integrative whole and to reveal the imbalances at the root of your symptoms, ideally before you reach a diseased state. Much like when you hear an orchestra with several instruments playing in harmony, the human body is designed to synchronize, which can bring about the greatest possibility for healing.
In my 19 years as a functional medicine practitioner and 15 years as national lecturer on the topic, I have furthered my own practice to investigate the critical factors that lead to those imbalances in the first place. From chronic, latent infections that slip undetected by traditional labs to food allergies, poor lifestyle choices and a multitude of environmental toxins, there can be any number of concerns that lead patients to my office with prior diagnoses of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, auto-immune disease, gut problems and cognitive issues.
One frequent patient complaint is brain fog, poor memory and a sense of deteriorating brain function. To shed light on the health of your brain, it is essential that we understand the gut.
Hippocrates, father of modern medicine, said, “All disease begins in the gut.”
The gut is now being hailed as the “second brain,” and for good reason. According to the NIH (National Institutes For Health), “The gut produces approximately 95% of our serotonin — our happy, feel-good hormone. Medical research has revealed that the gut-brain axis is a communication highway, a direct link to the brain and your nervous system. And if your gut is out of balance, this can have significant impact on your mood, cognition and mental health.
It is not enough to know that magnesium is a key nutrient that enhances different forms of learning and memory and can reduce inflammation or that zinc is critical for thinking. While we can eat magnesium-rich foods (think avocados, spinach and pumpkin seeds) and get zinc from oysters, tofu or squash, the real question is, “Is my gut absorbing/metabolizing these foods?”
After years of specialized lab testing on hundreds of patients, I have found the vast majority of people have, at best, a sub-par gut microbiome. Your gut microbiome consists of 100 trillion bacteria in your intestines that serve the necessary functions of making your vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, A, D, E, K and allowing (or disallowing) the absorption of essential nutrients such as calcium and iron. It serves to break down sugars and produce our own internal antibiotics and antifungals so that we don’t acquire pathogenic infections, among other functions.
Even if you don’t experience gut symptoms like bloating, gas or diarrhea, you can still have an imbalance in your gut microbiome called dysbiosis or leaky gut syndrome in which the inflamed gut is the trigger for brain dysfunction, systemic inflammation and immune challenges.
If you would like to know if your gut is at the center of your health or brain challenges, I recommend finding a qualified functional medicine practitioner to run a GI map or specialized testing to evaluate your microbiome.
June is Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month!
Emily Glasser, AP, LAc, ACN, Dip.OM
thequiettiger.com
