Naperville Integrated Wellness
NAPERVILLE'S TOP RATED LOCAL® FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE FACILITY
Still looking for answers? – Our Functional Medicine Doctor may have them!
You are not alone…
If you are like many of the people who contact our office, you have been trying to figure out how you resolve your current health issues…on your own. You just have not been able to find the answers you are seeking. Maybe you have tried to get your doctor(s) to run different tests or provide help that does not involve yet more drugs.
You might have read some books on different diets or maybe you listen to podcasts and you think you might know what the root cause of your health problem is. You probably have tried some different dietary supplements and maybe even a few different diets. Whatever your journey has been, you are still trying to figure this out on your own… Maybe you are starting to feel like your doctors are running out of answers… Maybe you feel like the system has failed you… Maybe you feel alone… Maybe you are not sure where to turn for help… Let’s look at this from 3 different perspectives and see if we can’t get you on the right track. If you are looking for more, then you need to see a different kind of doctor. With this option you will need to keep reading, listening to podcasts or whatever method of self-education you prefer. You will need to sort through a lot of information; and much of it will seem to be conflicting. Some will say you need to eat these kinds of As you can see, this path can be very challenging and confusing. You might even go so far as to order special tests on your own…but did you order the right ones? Do you know what to do with them after you see the results of your stool test or food test. Did you use a reputable lab? You could end up wasting lots of time and up spending thousands of dollars on tests, supplements and other popular products…and still not have any answers. Your 3rd option would be to work with a functional medicine doctor. Let’s take a look this option in more detail. First, we do not follow a diagnosis-drug style of healing. If your traditional doctor can’t diagnose you, they can’t treat you. In functional medicine Restoring health and reversing chronic illness cannot be accomplished with drugs, so option #1 is not a great choice. If you don’t know what you are trying to fix and can’t sort out what is useful, not useful and just plain false…doing it on your own can be very challenging. Just because a doctor or other “authority” has written a book on health it doesn’t mean it’s a good source of information for you. This is because we are all not the same…not even close. We are all at a different level of health, we all have our health “weak-links”, we have different genetics, we live different lifestyles in different environments, we have different levels of stress and how we handle it. I could go on and on. As a functional medicine doctor, I don’t put my patients in this or that diagnosis box. Instead I look for that individual’s unique root causes. Then collect information about those root causes so that an effective treatment plan can be created. Then I monitor the solutions that have been recommended and make adjustments to treatment when needed. Healing is a process. First you need to know what needs to be fixed, then create a solution to fix it and then confirm the solutions have worked. You can’t get this from our traditional medicine system, you can’t get this from a book, podcast or the advice of your neighbor. You can however get this kind of help from a functional medicine doctor. There are your choices. Keep working with your current doctor(s); keep trying to figure it out on your own; see a functional medicine doctor. Whichever path you choose, I hop you find what you are looking for. If you would like more information about functional medicine and integrative medicine or Dr. Sexton go to napervilleintegratedwellness.com Do your own research, inform yourself and ask lots of questions. When collecting information, you MUST consider the source. There is no shortage of false, misleading, outdated, profit-driven and utterly biased information in healthcare today; even from the most respected sources and organizations. This approach to healthcare is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate, or prevent any disease. This article is for information purposes and is not a substitute professional healthcare services. Contact our office for more information.Start here…
You have 3 paths to choose from…
#1. Keep working with your existing doctor(s)
Most likely the doctors you are working with are trained in traditional medicine. They are trained to arrive at a diagnosis and then match your diagnosis to the drug or drugs they feel will work best. I want you to really understand this process…tests are run to give a name to the disease you have and then give that disease a drug. If they can’t give your disease a name, it makes it very hard to match it to a drug. Many times they can give it a name…like IBS, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism or migraines. Unfortunately, this is where the investigation and testing ends. The only solution offered will be a drug or drugs to help you feel better. Rarely, does the doctor try to find out why you have these health issues. Nor, should they. They are not trained and don’t know how to figure out why you have these problems. They are only trained to label your health problem and match it to a drug. #2. Maybe you can figure it out on your own
foods and someone else will say those same foods will make you sicker. You will hear about all sorts of functional medicine concepts and terms. You might conclude that you have food sensitivities or food allergies. You might suspect you have a leaky gut or even SIBO. You could be wondering if you have an autoimmune disease or overgrowth of yeast in your bowel. Maybe you have adrenal fatigue or you are estrogen dominant. Could it be that your body is not detoxifying well or that you suffer from nutrient deficiencies…but which ones? #3 Work with a functional medicine doctor
we can work with a diagnosis, but we can also work without a diagnosis. Maybe your doctor has diagnosed you with IBS. A diagnosis if IBS is not extremely helpful, because traditional medicine does not know what causes IBS. This is because there is not a single cause. IBS is usually caused by more than one factor. It could be due to one or more of the following: food sensitivities, hormone imbalances, neurotransmitter imbalances, imbalance of microorganisms in the bowel, insufficient stomach acid production, low levels of digestive enzymes from the pancreas…etc. Traditional doctors will not consider or investigate any of these issues; functional medicine doctors will. If you are trying to fix IBS yourself, how will you confirm or exclude any of these problems? Reversing chronic illness is not easy. Your doctors are not trained to do it and finding the answer on your own might be like finding a needle in a haystack.
The purpose of functional medicine is:
Understanding how the body works, knowing how and where to investigate health issues, knowing what to look for, understanding the significance of what is found and creating a plan of action to reverse and correct the root cause the health problems.
My wish for you…health, happiness and a better quality of life!