My view on healthcare
Traditional healthcare providers use pills and surgery as therapeutic tools to deal with dysfunction or disease. That’s the model of care used in conventional training-diagnose the condition and match it with a corresponding drug. This model works well for acute issues. Sadly, it fails miserably in the area of the chronic disease, which affects over 125 million Americans.
As a nurse practitioner, I certainly use the above method, but my philosophy of care is more closely aligned with functional medicine, where patient and practitioner work together and focus on the underlying causes of chronic disease. By addressing root causes, and through healthy diet, appropriate supplementation, and lifestyle choices, many times the body can heal rather than rely on life-long prescriptions as a Band-aid for symptom control. I try to be balanced and use the best from both care models. If you’re not familiar with functional medicine, check out the illustration below.
And let's not forget, healthcare should really be about preventing sickness and disease, not just treating it.
The best way to heal a tree (our body) is by nourishing the soil it lives in. This is because the elements in the soil interact with genetic predispositions, experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and other influences, some of which cannot be changed. All of these things combined affect our susceptibility to diseases. These conditions manifest in the leaves (symptoms) giving us a peek into underlying health.
Functional medicine digs beneath the surface looking for the root cause by examining the elements in the soil and working upwards. Traditional medicine starts with the leaves and usually doesn’t consider damaged roots.