With all the information readily available today, when would you need the help of a doctor trained in functional medicine? With all the books, blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos on diets, nutrition and lifestyle modification at your fingertips, when or even why would you need a functional medicine doctor? Here is when you need help…

What you are doing is not working!

If you discover useful information from any of the resources listed above and you apply it and it works for you, then you don’t need the help of a functional medicine doctor. Some people only need to make a few changes in their diet or lifestyle to get their body back into balance.

Has this happened to you?

1. Maybe you have undiagnosed health issues… do you have a problem with iron or other nutrients or have a thyroid disorder or an autoimmune disease? Basically, you don’t have enough information about the state of your body to create a plan that will fix it. You get this kind of information from lab tests that may or may not have been ordered by your primary care physician or specialist. Did you just have the “standard” blood tests run and told you were “normal” or “nothing is wrong” …meaning no disease was found. I just consulted with a patient from Orland Park who was told her labs were “normal” and nothing was wrong with her. How can a person suffer from poor health and nothing be wrong with them?

How were the results interpreted? Were they viewed through eyes looking for optimizing function or simply the identification of disease?

Functional medicine doctors look for disease but also the early indicators that disease is developing in your body. Ideally, you want to catch these warning signs before you deteriorate to the level of DISEASE. Look for early signs of digestion problems, early signs of inflammation, early signs of immune system or nutrient deficiency problems are common examples.

2. You have multiple body system involvement that will require a more complete treatment plan. If you have a leaky gut, brain-fog, weight gain, insomnia and hormonal imbalances. You will probably need a more detailed health program. Doing a 2-week liver cleanse, taking a different probiotic or the latest fad supplement just won’t cut it. You need a plan based in fact and objective information about the current state of health your body is in. Otherwise, you are just guessing, trying this and that and wondering all over the place with your health. Just this week, I met with a patient from St Charles who had been working with a doctor that told her that all of her problems would be solved once her leaky gut was healed. Well, they had been trying to heal this poor woman’s “leaky gut” for a year and she was still not doing well. It turned out that she had two different autoimmune diseases one of the digestive tract and another that was attacking her nervous system. She will require more than a “leaky gut protocol” to experience improvement.
3. Maybe you started a self-created treatment plan you did not experience good results, or they were short-lived. This is what happened to a man from Bolingbrook I met with recently. He had made progress but then his gains slipped away. This often means that there is something more going on inside the body that needs to be discovered and addressed. Maybe you were on the right track but didn’t get down to the root cause of the problem. The good news is that you were probably on the right track, but there were some missing pieces to your health puzzle.

4. If you are not getting the help you need.

   If you have many things going wrong with your body and you don’t know where to start

   If you have made some progress but now sure what to do next.

   Give us a call, maybe we can help.

   Have you been looking for a functional medicine doctor in Orland Park, Bolingbrook or St. Charles?  Look no futher than Naperville Integrated Wellness!  Contact us today!

   The purpose of functional medicine is:

   Understanding health problems, knowing how and where to investigate, understanding what to look for, understanding what is found and creating a plan of action to correct the root cause of the health problem.

   This is what I do, this is what I love, this is functional medicine, this is why Naperville Integrated Wellness exists. 

   I hope you have found value in this information.

   I wish you health, happiness and a better quality of life!

   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. Why? The FDA enforces its position that these words can only be used with drugs. This approach does not use drugs.