How to Restore Balance with Functional Medicine
Your body is always fighting for you.
I know it often seems like it's fighting against you, but it's really not. It's working hard around the clock to bring you back into balance. It's a term called homeostasis, which is "any self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability, while adjusting to conditions that are optimal for survival."
Essentially, if something in your body is off, such as poor nutrient absorption or dealing with an overload of toxins or stress, your body will adjust to help make conditions more stable for survival.
But we don't just want to survive, do we? Absolutely not! We want to thrive.
If you're struggling with low energy, it's because your body is using resources in attempts to restore balance in another area. It could be fighting a stealth infections, trying to bring more oxygen throughout your body or sending nutrients to reduce inflammation in your gut.
Another example of this is fertility. If you’ve been struggling in this area, that's usually a sign your body is saying "we're dealing with unstable conditions here and we need to restore homeostasis in this body before we can delegate resources and energy into growing a whole other human.” It doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but we need to work on restoring balance with your hormones and bring you back to homeostasis first. An important place to start is through getting them tested and optimizing your diet.
Our bodies truly have our best interest in mind!
My Labs Were Normal, Why Should I Test Further?
If you’ve been dealing with health issues for some time, you’ve likely heard a doctor or 2 say: “Your labs look normal and everything looks great on paper”. How can this be possible when you feel so awful though?
It’s because our bodies are smart. Our blood pH and nutrients need to stay in a very close range, but it does this at the expense of other tissues. Additionally, “normal” and “optimal” are 2 very different things!
If you’re feeling depleted and fatigued, but your B12 and iron markers with your doctor are normal, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re optimal. What it could mean, is your body is keeping those nutrients within range - in the blood - but you might not be absorbing or using them properly due to an unhealthy gut.
Furthermore, when it comes to thyroid testing, bloodwork from a conventional doctor is often lacking key markers, and therefore not showing the entire picture.
How Functional Testing is Different
Conventional medicine is great when you're in a crisis and require emergency treatment or life-saving measures like surgery, but it does have some gaps. That's where functional medicine and nutrition come into play.
Conventional medicine looks at disease states and provides solutions when someone is already dealing with a serious health crisis. But these solutions don’t usually address the root of the problem, they just mask it.
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Functional medicine and nutrition look deeper into the imbalances and root cause factors as to why you’re experiencing symptoms. It works to restore them naturally through food, nutritional supplements and lifestyle changes rather than jumping straight to medications or surgery. We want to catch issues while they’re first developing or ideally, prevent them developing at all!
We don't cure anything, ever. We simply give your body the tools and missing factors it needs to restore itself back to homeostasis.
Visit our Services Page to see the different tests we offer for digestive health, thyroid, adrenal and hormone panels, bloodwork and more.
Asher Kleiber
Registered Holistic Nutritionist™
