I work as an Occupational Therapist and have been in the field for 20 years. I have worked in a hospital, in an outpatient clinic and in several nursing homes. I have met a ton of interesting people who have faced some difficult health challenges. When I was a kid, Mother Fran thought I should be a nurse. I always laughed at the notion and reminded her that I fainted at the sight of a lot of blood. Maybe I should have listened to her! When I look at job opportunities, the positions that are of interest to me often require an RN degree. I have no desire to go back to school but if I did, nursing school would be on interest. Like Occupational Therapists, they work in a wide variety of settings and with many different populations of people.
I used to love to read mysteries and the occasional romance novel. For a long time, I just quit reading and got a bit too comfortable on my couch. In the last few years, my love of reading has resumed but my reading material has changed dramatically. Now I spend my time reading non-fiction. I read books written by medical doctors, by functional medicine practitioners, by nutritionists and by dieticians.
I love listening to health related podcasts to learn more about diet and lifestyle changes that can improve health. I am particularly interested in learning about what causes chronic disease and what people are doing to slow down the progression and even reverse these insidious diseases.
The traditional medical approach attempts to treat the symptoms of chronic disease with medicine in the form of pills. Not 1 pill, but lots of pills. Pills to treat the initial symptoms and then pills to treat the side effects of the pills. If your symptom is high blood sugar, they prescribe medication to lower your blood sugar. But they don’t ask, what is causing the high blood sugar. They don’t always dig deeper than the symptoms. Doctor’s using this approach don’t uncover what is going on inside of the body to cause the symptom so they treat the wrong thing.
Practitioners using a Functional medicine approach are like detectives, looking in the entire body to determine what is causing the symptoms, what underlying mechanism in the body is not functioning properly and then they address that. One of the amazing things they have found is that a small number of things are responsible for or contribute to many different symptoms that are at the root of chronic disease. Meaning, many chronic diseases have the same root, underlying cause.
One of these key contributors to disease is chronic inflammation. According to an article in a recent AARP magazine, as well as what I have learned through all of my reading; inflammation impacts our brain and contributes to dementia, depression, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis and Chronic Fatigue. It affects our chest in the form of Asthma, Cardiovascular disease, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD). In our abdomen inflammation contributes to Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity, and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. In our extremities it is linked to Rheumatoid and Osteoarthritis. Inflammation is everywhere and it is causing harm.
Chronic inflammation, is a slow, creeping condition caused by a misfiring of the immune system that keeps your body in a constant, long-term state of high alert.
Robert H. Shmerling
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
When our immune system is set to high alert all of the time, cellular and tissue damage occur. Our body never gets the opportunity to complete its maintenance and repair tasks as it is too busy dealing with the more immediate threat of inflammation caused by a misfiring immune system. This can go on for years without any symptoms appearing, with people feeling fine and no disease process apparent. Over time, the body begins to wear down, symptoms appear and disease is brewing.
What can we do about inflammation?
We can go to the doctor and get a pill to address the initial symptom. It won’t fix what is wrong but it might make us feel better. After some time, we will get a new symptom and a new pill to ease that symptom but that won’t fix what is wrong either. This approach simply doesn’t work with chronic disease. By the time we have symptoms, something has likely been going on for months or even years. If we can get inflammation under control NOW we can get ourselves on a better, healthier path.
If we stop eating a diet, that is chock full of inflammatory foods and introduce foods that are anti-inflammatory in nature we can begin to reverse the process. This is one of the reasons my honey and I complete a Whole30 once or twice per year. It is also why I encourage you to give it a try! You can read more about our Whole30 experience in these posts. My Whole30 Experiment, Rocking the Whole30, and Whole30 Mission Complete.
Chances are you or someone you love is suffering from a chronic disease and being treated for the symptoms with multiple medications. Isn’t it time for a change. Isn’t it time for a cure versus a band-aid? Be your own detective by learning everything you can. Hire a detective (a doctor who uses a functional medicine approach) to start digging for the root cause.
In the meantime, make changes to your health by eliminating inflammatory foods and replacing them with anti-inflammatory foods. You deserve to be healthy!
Lake Girl
