Is Functional Medicine Broken Forever?

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Is Functional Medicine Broken

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the podcast. It is Dr. Anderson, and today we're going to talk about functional medicine and if it is kind of permanently broken or if it's fixable and to cut to the chase, the answer is it all depends upon you.

The Fear Based Health Narrative

SPEAKER_00 0:15

So this is the subject that's been really bothering me lately. The functional medicine world is starting to sound a lot like the conventional medicine world. Everything's framed around the idea that your body is completely broken. You got bad genetics, your hormones are broken, your metabolism is damaged, you have cellular health problems, your nervous system is dysfunctional, your gut's not working, it's a complete disaster. We got to do parasite cleanses. There's always another test, there's always another diagnosis, another hidden problem that's like completely working against us, and our bodies just aren't what they used to be.

Your Body Adapts To Inputs

SPEAKER_00 0:49

But rarely do we ever talk about the other side of the equation, which is why I got into functional medicine in the first place. And that's that your body is constantly trying to protect you. Your body is constantly adapting to the environment that you give it. It's always giving the proper response to the environment that essentially you presented to it. So if we present an awesome environment, then things may go a little bit better. And if we present a horrible environment, then things don't go very well. Sometimes the symptoms we're experiencing are not proof that your body doesn't work or that it's failing, but rather it's evidence that your body knows exactly what to do. For example, if you were to give it inadequate sleep, insufficient nutrition, chronic stress, not enough movement, um, or just uh inconsistent habits. One day good diet, one day bad diet, one day good diet, one day bad diet, then this doesn't mean that you're gonna be sick, it doesn't mean you're gonna be healthy. But essentially we have to understand that the symptoms we have are a picture of what our body's feeling at any given time. And so if you were to go based upon severity of your symptom, you would say, okay, my symptom is really severe, then you have to accept that probably your lifestyle was also pretty severe. Now, some of you guys are gonna get online and get really mad that there's exceptions to this rule, and I 100% agree. So this doesn't mean that your genetics don't matter. It doesn't mean that your previous trauma or illness or injuries or medications you take or difficult circumstances are completely irrelevant. It means that those things don't automatically determine everything. Okay, you can have imperfect genetics, we all do. You can have a really difficult history, most people do. You can have plenty of disadvantages and still thrive. But at some point in time, we have to stop giving away all of our control. Uh, we have to accept that the body's in like immensely powerful. It's resilient, it's capable of changing. But we have to also give it a reason to change. It's not going to change on its own. It's going to, well, it will change on its own. It will change on its own in response to the environment that you gave it. And that environment that you gave it is where you're at right now. And to change that, the reason the body will change additionally or again or to a better state is based upon action.

Protein First Then Build Habits

SPEAKER_00 3:06

So instead of these days, although I sell lots of supplements in my office, instead of asking, what supplement are you missing, ask whether you're eating enough protein to maintain your muscle, to rebuild your immune system, to grow new organs. Okay. So for many adults, that means building each meal, for example, around protein rather than surviving on energy drinks, coffee, snacks, small dinner. Um, go ahead and eat eggs in the morning. Cook your meat for dinner, drink your protein shake when things are way too busy. Okay, stop pretending that a handful of almonds was enough for an entire meal, and that because you ate some beans or quinoa on the side, that you got enough protein to supply your high stress lifestyle. Instead of endlessly researching the perfect exercise program and scrolling through social media and finding a new influencer to follow, start using your body. Just start doing something. You know, walk every day. If you're walking every day, then put a stronger uh emphasis on walking every day. Walk further, walk longer, walk faster, lift something heavy two or three times a week. Practice sitting down, standing up, carrying weight, pushing, pulling, or using your muscles before they become too weak to support you. In the aging population, practicing sitting and standing or getting up off the ground can be a life changer. Okay, so you don't need to have a perfect program to begin. You don't need to search online again. You just need to do a program that you will actually be consistent

Sleep Stress Discipline Consistency

SPEAKER_00 4:35

with. So instead of blaming your low energy on some kind of magical problem that you have in genetics, how about you accept the fact that you're only sleeping five hours a night consistently and you start creating a bedtime routine and protect your sleep like it actually matters to you? There's no exceptions to the rule that, hey, I have to be in bed at a certain time, and then I have to wake up at a certain time. We're all just making excuses on our bedtimes. So instead of saying stress is destroying your health, and oh my gosh, I have so much stress. Why don't you just begin the process and remove one unnecessary commitment each week? Remove one each day. Go put your phone away. There's a little less stress there. Go outside, breathe, pray, have a journal, take 10 minutes of quiet and start before your day starts. Do something that controls that stress rather than saying that stress is just destroying your health. Instead of waiting for motivation, stick with discipline, right? If we're not motivated, it doesn't matter. If we already decided that we're gonna do something and we stay disciplined to a goal, that's a non-negotiable action that we can get to. 30 grams of protein at breakfast, 20 minutes walk after dinner, two strength workouts, like heavyweight workouts a week, um, making sure, you know, all the lights in your house are off by 10:30. Um, like, you know, and I'll just go in on that one a little bit. Like, so I mean, that one's not too hard to shut off your lights. A lot of people are gonna worry about Wi-Fi signals. A lot of people are gonna worry about their, their um, I don't know, electrolytes, you know, but like if you're just not sleeping, you're just not sleeping, right? So I think we've gone really deep into problems and we really haven't covered some of the basics. Um, so as you go through like your life and you realize, oh crap, I'm totally doing all these things that are leading to my poor health. Why don't you pick something, something simple that's not complex, that's easy to do, that there's absolutely no excuse to skip. Okay, because you have to finally accept that your health is the result of countless factors, most of which you have control of, for better or worse. It's not a it's not a story of shame, it's not a story of guilt. Okay. It's about recognizing that nearly every factor that you that that contributes to your health, mostly what you put in your in your mouth, and including all the stressors that we often complain about, are still within our control. Okay.

Extreme Ownership And The Next Step

SPEAKER_00 6:55

So if we take on the concept of what we call extreme ownership, it doesn't mean that we blame anyone. It doesn't mean you don't have to blame yourself. You don't have to blame your spouse, you don't have to blame your parents that raised you differently. All you simply do is take responsibility for the absolute next step. So you can't control your genetics. You may not be able to control some of your past or even fix relationships that previously went wrong. You may not control every diagnosis, every injury, right? If you had a surgery, like that's done. Like it's it's already there. You already had to have it. All you can control is your next stressor or your next circumstance. Um, you can control your next meal. You can control whether you go outside and move today, whether you take that second walk in the day, or whether you just stick with one because you're too tired. But you can physically force one out. You can control whether you keep another promise to yourself, aka whether you have self-discipline. Um, so stop treating your body like it's broken. You need to start treating it like it's an adaptable system that responds to what you repeatedly ask it to do. Your body is not waiting for you to be perfect. It doesn't need a new flawless diet. Yeah, there's a lot of strategies that we can do, but what your body's really waiting for is some form of consistency. And then not only consistency in all things, but consistency in those staples. So go make sure you eat your protein, go make sure you lift some weights, go make sure you take your walk to burn some fat, make sure that you get your sleep, do the work that it takes to have a healthy body, and then take ownership of your health and starting with the very next decision, and try to do that the best you can every single day. And you're gonna find that consistency provotes health way more than any fad parasite cleanse that you can do.