Naperville Integrated Wellness
NAPERVILLE'S TOP RATED LOCAL® FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE FACILITY
Your Health Requires Self-Care – Functional Medicine Is The Answer To A Longer Life
“12 minutes and a pill” won’t cut it anymore…
The traditional medicine model is quickly becoming the “old way” of providing healthcare services for chronic health problems. This outdated model of care has failed to prevent or reverse chronic health issues. All chronic health problems continue to spiral out of control, and we are losing the health-disease battle in this country. We are getting sicker and sicker and our children are getting diseases we only used to see in middle-age. There is now a “new way” of helping people prevent chronic disease and even reverse it. A new say to improve your health, have more energy, lose weight, reduce your health risks factors and improve your quality of life. This new way not only helps you; it helps your children and your children’s children. “Chronic disease is the no. 1 cause of death and disability in the United States. Treating patients with chronic diseases accounts for over 75% of the nation’s health care spending.” (1) The old way is that patients see a doctor a couple of times each year, for about 12 minutes per visit, in order to address a specific problem they have—like diabetes, hypertension, migraines or irritable bowel syndrome. Typically, the doctor prescribes a medication at the end of the appointment, which the patient is told to take until the next appointment. Very little—if anything—happens between the appointments. Chronic disease is caused primarily by diet, lifestyle, and personal behavior. This means that the choices we make on a daily basis about what to eat, whether we exercise, how much we sleep, etc. are the most important factors that determine our health. A 12-minute appointment with the doctor is not enough to address even one or two of these factors, much less all of them. And, in most cases, medications are merely Band-Aids—they don’t address the root causes of health problems. In the new way, functional medicine doctors create models of care that recognize this and provide patients with the information and support they need to make effective and results-oriented, diet, lifestyle, and behavior changes. In the old way, you’d be sent away with some vague advice about eating better and exercising more. A few years later, once your blood sugar had risen into the diabetic range, you’d be prescribed a drug to lower it. In the new way, your doctor tells you that, although your blood sugar is a bit high but still in the “normal range” for now, without intervention it’s going to keep increasing. A functional medicine doctor will tell you that it’s far easier to take action now to prevent you from progressing to pre-diabetes (and eventually, diabetes) than it is to reverse diabetes once you already have it. And, rather than sending you away with vague advice and leaving you to fend for yourself—which we know rarely works—they say something like this: “We know most people with high blood sugar eventually progress to diabetes if we don’t intervene. But we don’t want this to happen to you! We’re going to set you up with our functional medicine health coach, who will create and help implement an appropriate dietary plan. Then we will do a follow-up blood test so we can monitor your progress and make sure we get the results we are looking for.” You might be thinking, “Duh! This is so obviously how it should work.” And you’d be right. Critics might say, “Well, I agree that this makes sense, but how are we supposed to pay for it?” This is what I would tell them: “This approach would be far cheaper than what we’re doing now. It costs about $14,000 per year to treat a single patient with type 2 diabetes. If this person is diagnosed at age 40, and lives until they are 80, that’s a cost of $560,000 over their lifetime.” “But if we spent just a few thousand dollars up-front on nutrition, health, and fitness coaching, we could prevent this person from getting diabetes in the first place—and save the healthcare system $555,000 over the course of their lifetime. At the same time helping this person prevent heart disease, stroke, obesity and dementia; as well as countless other diseases that can result from diabetes.” This is the path we have to take if we’re going to have any hope of reversing the rising tide of chronic disease. Do you want to be healthy? Do you want to not only live longer but have a better quality of life during those years? Well, you will need a healthy body to do have these. The “old way” is failing to provide this. The “new way” is the functional medicine approach. It gets to the root cause of chronic health problems. It reverses chronic disease, extends life and improves the quality of that life. Does is require you to do more than just popping some pills? Yes, it does. Might you need to eat better? Yes. Get off your butt and get a bit more physical activity? Probably. Might is require you to change some of your habits? Most likely. Its up you to you and it has always been up to you. You always get to choose…your health is in your hands. Not the hands of pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies or your doctor’s. The facts are in, the data has been analyzed again and again…the old system of “12 minutes and a pill” is not working. And there will NEVER be a pill for health. If you are ready to take control of your health, if you want to live longer and enjoy better quality of life, then look to functional medicine for the answers and information you have not been getting thus far. We are here to help. We are ready when you are. 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.With this old model, is it any wonder that we’re suffering from an epidemic of chronic disease?
The new way is based on a fundamental truth…
Most healthcare is self-care
In other words, most of what determines whether you will be healthy and well—or suffer with disease—happens outside of the doctor’s office. It happens in your home, at your dinner table and everywhere else you find yourself.
What would this look like?
Imagine you go to your doctor for your regular check-up, and they discover that you have high-normal blood sugar. 
Do you want to want to get the most out of this life? 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!