Now before I begin, I want to preface this saying I don’t have any distain for our medical healthcare establishment. I believe it is filled with caring, wonderful people who want nothing more than to deliver the best care that they can offer. I believe they work extremely hard and with few exceptions, all have the highest integrity. I merely have a different opinion on how to relieve a client’s health concerns. Every day, those in need of medical assistance, wait for weeks to see their doctor and miss work or social events to go for care at standard medical practices. Most doctors learn a certain perspective of medicine where you record the patient’s symptoms and with that collective list give the person a disease diagnosis. Then they target those symptoms specifically and call that treatment. They are trained to look at the body by their broken parts. What I do is show clients how to support systems to obtain their most healthy self.

A person might think “wait Mark, that’s what I want my doctor to do; make the thing that’s bothering me go away”. I’ll just briefly explain that those pain points are signaling that something has gone awry. For example, if someone is having thyroid problems, doctors will treat the thyroid because that organ is not functioning correctly. They will not spend any time trying to figure out the patient’s unique personal story to investigate why the thyroid (in this example) isn’t optimal. When we go to a doctor’s office we leave with pharmaceuticals for the symptoms and referrals to more doctors. More times than not they don’t offer anything about bringing the patient back to an optimal state.

Let me tell you an all too common story about a wonderful woman named Jen (name changed), who has been having problems regulating her blood sugar. Now, the reason for that is not what’s important here, we want to follow Jen through a typical journey to her primary care physician. Jen makes her appointment because she got a call saying her test results are in and the doctor would like to discuss them with her. She heads over to the doctor’s office and waits in a room for her name to be called. She is probably nervous about the condition she may instinctively know she has and is probably worried about what the doctor will say. Her name is called, and the dread really settles in because no one wants to receive bad news at a doctor’s office.

Jen follows a nurse with a big smile down the hall and is put in a sterile looking room. After a couple standard measurements, the nurse lets her know the doctor will be with her shortly and departs. As she sits and twiddles her thumbs while she combs the walls with her eyes looking at the pictures and infographics hung around her that have nothing to do with her personal situation. 15 minutes pass by and Dr. Stevenson walks into the room. After sitting down and exchanging formalities and begins to review the findings of the lab results.

The doctor calmly runs through the important portions of the results and shares that she does in fact have an issue with her blood sugar levels. He says the words, “You have diabetes”. In her head, Jen tells herself that she is now someone who has diabetes. Jen gets angry at herself internally and asks how this could happen to her. Dr. Stevenson shares that he sees these types of results all the time and to not worry. He answers her questions until she runs out and then tells her which medications she will be taking. Her lab tests showed a pretty severe dysfunction so she will have to take a pill and injection medication. The doctor doesn’t tell her how long she will be on medications for because he is prescribing them for the rest of her life, most likely. He unfortunately didn’t offer any methods or suggestions to combat her new condition except to very generally recommend diet and exercise. Dr Stevenson didn’t tell her what types of exercise would be best for her. As for diet, he didn’t give her any direction as to how she should eat except mentioning healthy foods and stay away from processed sugar.

The doctor says he’s sorry and asks if she has any last questions. Jen shakes her head and the physician exits the exam room. The time they spent together was about 10 minutes and in that time Jen’s world was turned upside down. The image that has been put in front of her is that she now must manage her blood sugar with a variety of drugs and the doctor gave her no hope of resolving her health challenges.

I know that was a bit dramatic, but you understand the common situation I was conveying. The time for suppressing symptoms and calling it treatment is coming to an end. We are shifting into a golden age of health, where we are learning to give the body the nutrition and environment it desires so that it can perform the functions it has been intelligently designed to perform. Our bodies have been created to be magnitudes more powerful than a drug or a hack. It’s common that people don’t have the time to dedicate to studying all the different systems of the body or all the modalities for healing. These same people, when given a road map and answers, do extremely well by simply following directions and living a balanced lifestyle. The reason why health topics are so incredibly hard to apply is the information alone isn’t enough; the context of the questions is what’s important because it is the key to the answer. Use functional laboratory assessments because this information is invaluable. Labs allow, those who perceive the body as more than just the sum of its symptoms, the insight to give you the best personalized plan possible. As the world continues to change the medical establishment will have to stop seeing its patients as sick people. Those, like myself, who have learned to use the right tools will end up changing lives by viewing the body as being out of balance instead. We should be helping people by supporting systems not treating diseases. Waiting for the standard medical establishment to catch up will only waste time for anyone who wants to bring change to their health now.