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      Comparing Conventional and Natural Medicine

      The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

      Throughout this book, I offer guidance on treating specific illnesses, but my approach to healing differs significantly from that of conventional medicine. In this section, I highlight the differences and point out situations in which conventional medicine is the better choice.

      The distinction between conventional and natural medicine boils down to the difference in their goals. Conventional medicine seeks to eliminate illness, while natural medicine seeks to optimize wellness. This is especially true for the type of medicine I practice – functional medicine. While conventional medicine focuses on battling infections and symptoms of illnesses, such as asthma, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, fibromyalgia, heart disease, and obesity, with symptom-suppression pharmaceuticals, functional medicine seeks to treat the imbalances or dysfunctions in the body that give rise to these illnesses.

      The imbalances and dysfunctions that natural medicine treats include the following:

      Functional medicine seeks to restore health by giving the body what it needs for optimal function and removing anything that gets in the way. As a result, it leads to more durable, long-term solutions to chronic illness.

      Preventive medicine is getting a lot of press these days, because even conventional medicine practitioners are realizing that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Unfortunately, the prevention offered by conventional medicine typically comes in the form of early detection and treatment, and the treatment rarely targets the underlying cause of these illnesses.

      Attend just about any hospital-sponsored health fair, and you’ll see all sorts of screenings for cholesterol, atherosclerosis, blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, colon cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, and prostate cancer. What you don’t see are screenings for many of the underlying causes of disease mentioned earlier in this section: vitamin and mineral deficiencies, impaired digestion and mineral absorption, and so on.

      Conventional health screenings are great, but they’re only the first step toward identifying and treating underlying conditions that give rise to illnesses. An enlightened physician may suggest making changes to diet and lifestyle, such as reducing the amount of salt you eat or cutting down on sweets, and your insurance company may offer discounts on gym memberships and exercise equipment, but without a treatment tailored to address deficiencies and dysfunctions, you’re fighting a losing battle.

      During a visit with a natural medicine practitioner, you can expect a much more thorough assessment of your health that’s likely to include tests to detect vitamin and mineral deficiencies, hormone imbalances, food allergies and sensitivities, and gut health. And your treatment will focus on optimizing health so that your body has everything it needs to fight infection and heal itself and you have the information you need to remove anything that’s getting in its way.

      No treatment is completely void of negative side effects, but natural treatments are much safer than those offered by conventional medicine, which usually involve prescription medications, risky medical procedures, and surgeries. The use of prescription medications is particularly dangerous, because many prescription medications cause side effects that require additional prescription medications to counter. Patients frequently end up taking a dozen medications or more and end up feeling as miserable as or worse than ever.

      This never-ending cycle of diagnosis followed by prescription doesn’t happen with a natural/nutritional approach to healing, because the natural approach treats the causes of illness instead of trying to play whack-a-mole with whatever symptoms happen to pop up during an office visit.

      

Natural cures are much safer than most treatments offered by conventional medicine, but natural herbs and supplements, even vitamins, carry some risks. Although I provide general guidelines on which supplements, herbs, probiotics, and other nutraceuticals to take and how much, I encourage you to consult a qualified natural medicine practitioner for guidance. If a supplement is powerful enough to heal you, it’s powerful enough to harm you if you take too much or if it’s something your body can’t process.

      Conventional medicine isn’t all bad. In fact, I recommend it over the natural approach for injuries, life-threatening emergencies, and acute illnesses, such as heart attack, lung infection (such as pneumonia), asthma or allergy attacks, renal (kidney) failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, certain bacterial infections, cancer, and alcohol or drug overdose.

      

Natural medicine is better suited to preventing and treating chronic conditions, including asthma, allergies, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, fibromyalgia, and obesity. The increasing prevalence of chronic illnesses in the U.S. is sufficient proof that the current model for preventing and treating chronic illness not only doesn’t work but also contributes to this trend. By exploring natural medicine as an alternative approach, you’re taking a big first step in reversing this trend in your own life and the lives of the people you touch.

Chapter 2

      Adopting a Natural Cures Diet and Lifestyle

       In This Chapter

      Most illness results either from a genetic susceptibility combined with physical or emotional stressor or from a weak immune system exposed to an infectious agent – a bacteria, virus, or fungus. You can’t do anything to correct an underlying genetic vulnerability, but you can do a great deal to boost your immune system and avoid stressors that trigger illness – poor diet, emotional tension, and environmental toxins. In this chapter, I recommend changes to diet and lifestyle that strengthen your body’s ability to prevent illness while reducing your exposure to common stressors that trigger illness.

      Changing What and How You Eat: Using Food as Medicine

      Scientists are beginning to discover that food is more than mere sustenance. Not only does food fuel the body and provide the basic building blocks for growth and development, but it also conveys information. Foods can flip switches in the DNA to trigger numerous illnesses and health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, and neurocognitive disorders. To improve health and reverse the course of disease, treat food as medicine and start making better food choices. This section shows you how.

      

The standard American diet (SAD), heavy in sugars and grains, is highly inflammatory, which is why it’s so bad for you. The foods I recommend constitute what could be considered an anti-inflammatory diet. Throughout this book, when I mention adopting an anti-inflammatory diet, I’m recommending the diet described in this chapter.