Our Approach
Traditional Holistic Medicine for the Modern World
The Functional Medicine Folly
Have you ever gone to see a conventional or functional medicine practitioner, and you feel like there is no roadmap? Like every appointment is starting at square one?
It goes something like this: your practitioner does bloodwork, diagnoses you with something, comes up with a theory on why it’s happening, and then gives you a protocol to address the issue.
If that doesn’t work, they scratch their head, and its back to the drawing board to try something else. (And this cycle can go on and on for months.) This strategy is called “throwing tomatoes at the wall to see what sticks.”
That’s not a philosophy. It’s just trying random things based on a faulty foundation to begin with. If we want to avoid this approach, we need to ask ourselves some basic questions like: What is health? What is disease? and How do we heal?
Allopathic vs. Holistic Medicine
In the allopathic (conventional) system, disease is a random event that happens to you because of bad genes (aka bad luck), or bad germs, which you can’t see and can’t avoid even if you tried. Bummer.
In this medical paradigm, you are at the mercy of fate. And the only thing that you can do is to fight diseases by suppressing your symptoms with drugs and surgery.
When you do this with natural medicines, we call it “green allopathy” or “functional medicine.” It’s the same philosophy as conventional medicine, but instead of using drugs, you use supplements. Identify the disease that you are powerless to prevent, and then fight it with vitamins.
- SIBO? Take antibiotic herbs.
- Insomnia? Take melatonin.
- Depressed? Take St. Johns Wort.
- Immune issues? Take Echinacea and vitamin C.
Your Healing Superpower
Our body’s are always trying to correct themselves. But if the body can’t correct the problem, we develop disease. What prevents the body from self-correcting?
The truth is, health is your God-given power. It’s your natural state. We were born to thrive on this planet, and our bodies were made to heal. Not just from cuts, bruises, and broken bones, but even from chronic degenerative problems.
Imbalances in the foundation of health. In other words, disease is not some entity that overtakes us because of bad luck. Disease happens as a direct result of a faulty foundation to begin with. When we correct these imbalances, the body heals and disease naturally disappears.
The Beginning of Personal Empowerment
Now here’s the real talk: if disease is a natural result of imbalances in the foundation of health, that means that it’s not just random.
You are in the driver’s seat. You have all the power in your hands to heal.
No longer are your results contingent upon specialists in white coats, modern technological equipment, expensive therapies, and insurance companies. In that model, your fate is in someone else’s hands.
In reality, health is common sense, not scientifically complicated as it is made out to be. Health is created when we understand the language of the body and act in accordance with its needs.
Building Your Health Foundation
Let’s get practical. If we want to be healthy, we want to ensure that the foundation of health is balanced so that our body can do its thing and naturally self-correct (aka heal).
The foundation of health rests on four pillars:
NUTRITION: the cells of the body have the nutritional building blocks to function optimally
DETOXIFICATION: the tissues are clear of toxins and the elimination channels are open
LIFESTYLE: your daily actions are in harmony with nature and your body’s needs (ie sleep, sunlight, water, movement, breath, physical alignment, etc.)
MIND-BODY: your mental and emotional states are in alignment with yourself and your life
These pillars are taught by every major holistic branch of medicine, from East to West, though they may use different words.
It’s amazing how many people have come to see us after seeing so many doctors, running so many blood tests, where they say “I’ve tried everything,” but the basics are not even in place.
If you have this foundation established, good health is the natural and inevitable consequence.
The Human Experiment of You
Now how do we figure out what imbalances we need to correct?
First, we need to understand who you are: your daily experience, your schedule, life circumstances, and history. How are we to possibly understand what you are dealing with if we don’t understand you in the context of your life, past and present?
Let’s say you are trying to get somewhere using Google Maps. You may know your destination, if you don’t know where you are now, how can you possibly get the right directions?
You are like an experiment in human life. You were designed to be healthy and were given all the tools you need to heal. So if you are experiencing issues, something got off track somewhere. It’s not that your body is broken, but some things are simply out of place.
Sometimes, due to issues in your family history or development, you may have particular health challenges that are difficult to overcome. Even if something isn’t “reversible”, we believe that you can always optimize any situation to tap deeper levels of well-being. You fate is not bound to your genetics or your history.
By working together collaboratively, we can figure out exactly where you are, how you got there, what is out of alignment, and how to get to where you want to be.
Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Holistic Health Assessment
Next, we assess imbalances within the body from a holistic perspective. Instead of looking for a diagnosis, we look for dysfunctional patterns that impact the foundation of health.
Let’s say you have chronic constipation, acne, low sex drive, and anxiety. A functional medicine doctor may order a stool test and hormone panel, give you a topical for your skin, and refer you to a psychiatrist.
We don’t do that. Instead of looking at each problem individually, we figure out the underlying imbalances that connect all of these issues into one coherent picture. We call this zooming out instead of zooming in, or seeing the forest for the trees.
Using traditional evaluation techniques not available in a typical doctor’s office, we look for factors like food intolerances, environmental toxicity, stress, specific organ imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and metabolic imbalances to figure out the common denominator.
These factors have been used by traditional naturopathic doctors and healers for decades to assess the physiology from a holistic perspective and identify root causes.
We can even look at modern blood work and find nutritional deficiencies, toxicities, and organ imbalances using different ranges and recognizing maladaptive trends that the lab doesn’t look for.
This allows us to figure out what’s really going on even if you have stumped multiple specialists and your bloodwork always comes back as “normal”. (For more info about how we differ from functional medicine, see our FAQs here.)
Standing on the Shoulders of Holistic Medicine Giants
With all of this information, we can put together a plan that is truly unique to you.
Our programs are build around the health breakthroughs of our forefathers of the last 100+ years. We have synthesized the best health practices we could find that are individualized, holistic, tap into nature’s healing power, and work at the foundational level (ie the root cause), by the safest and most effective means possible.
These practices were birthed from a traditional, truly holistic framework of health and have a track record success over decades.
We don’t just do random protocols, cross our fingers, and hope for the best.
Starting from a solid philosophical foundation, we understand who you are, assess what’s happening to you, and implement a plan based around traditional proven methods and practices to correct the imbalances.
It’s simple, yet it’s not always easy.
But in our experience, it can lead to deep personal insights and transformational results that you can maintain for years to come, as it has for the millions of people before you who tapped into the real power of holistic medicine through the ages.
Your Custom Health Roadmap
Through our process, you will know exactly what to eat and what to avoid, with a diet tailored to your exact acid-alkaline balance and traditional superfood recommendations to fill your deficiencies.
We will identify your body’s toxic burden and implement tried-and-tested detox routines and remedies that gently open the channels of elimination and drain toxins from your tissues.
Based on bio-resonance testing, we will use high-grade supplements for short-term results and long-term maintenance that fill your deficiencies, support your organs, and stimulate your body’s self-healing.
We will design a schedule for you to optimize your daily routines and environment with traditional lifestyle practices and modern equipment that get you in touch with the natural rhythms of your body.
We will help you identify and release false beliefs from your personal history that can help your body heal in a deeper way than ever before. (Learn more about personal health consulting here.)