Integrative medicine.   You may have been presented with this idea before, but what is integrative medicine?  Ponder for one moment what this type of medicine involves?  Who can it help?  Am I someone who should consider being treated by an integrative physician?  What kind of doctor practices integratively?  Finally, the question on every person’s mind: can it help me?

Before this questions can be answered one must understand how the non-integrative or “conventional doctor” practices.  “Conventional” physicians are trained in two modalities, drugs and surgery.  Therefore, when you visit a “conventional” physician one can expect to be treated for their particular condition with one or both of these approaches.  Once an individual receives a diagnosis, the treatment is already decided. If a suitable diagnosis cannot be established, the “watch and wait” technique is employed while the person’s illness grows.  The truth is that the vast majority of “conventional” physicians never deviate from the accepted, mundane treatment no matter how ineffective, toxic, or inefficient the therapy may be.  The result is that all illnesses are treated as if they were acute diseases.  However, most diseases that plague man are chronic and long term.  The result is an inevitable downward spiral of disease that continually worsens and worsens.  We are no strangers to this phenomenon.  We have all bore witness to the continual deterioration of those who have solely relied on conventional medicine for their health care.  “Conventional” medicine simply means treating the symptoms and not the cause.

Integrative medicine is a way of delivering medicine that combines conventional medicine and alternative medicine.  Alternative meaning that the physician thinks outside of the box and utilizes the biochemistry, physiology, anatomy, nutrition, he/she was originally educated as the foundation for treating chronic disease.  Since these basic sciences are the origin of illness itself, an educated and diverse physician with knowledge in these realms can deliver treatments that target the cause of the disease.  An integrative physician will use all the tools necessary to restore and optimize a person’s health including nutrition, biochemistry, plant pharmacology, acupuncture, homeopathy, detox, diet, colonics, infrared sauna, chiropractic medicine, massage, IV therapies, hydrotherapy, injections, drugs, and surgery.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of conventional medical schools completely ignores the fact that nutrition plays a role in disease and therefore do not require these courses for their medical students.  Without this critical information, their medical students graduate unable to practice integrative medicine unless they seek and complete additional medical training in these integrative areas – which many do.

It is in your best interest to seek an integrative physician no matter what the diagnosis or prognosis. Integrative physicians and practitioners include NMD’s, (Naturopathic Medical Doctors) MD’s, DO’s, DC’s, (Chiropractors), L.Ac (Acupuncturists) and Homeopaths.   It is never too late to feel better and reverse illness.  It is your life.  You must in essence become your own advocate for health.  The first step is finding a skilled integrative practitioner and making an appointment to begin the process.  Understand one thing.  There are no absolutes in life.  For example: If you leave two hours early for work there is no guarantee that you won’t be late.  Maybe the road got shut down, you got lost, there was an accident, etc.  Medicine is the same way.  Conventional physicians deal in absolutes, which rarely ever are the only options.  You always have another option.

Dr John D Williamson NMD

Dr. John Williamson provides integrative medical care to his patients at Bodhi Body Integrative Medical Centers in Chandler and Scottsdale, Arizona.

Why should I take nutritional supplements when I eat a balanced diet?
Don’t I get all the nutrients I need from food?

Now that we know our food is “filled with nutritional holes” let’s evaluate the next point.

Our food is “… covered in poisons,”

If a person buys 100% organic foods and eats only at organic restaurants, then their food isn’t really covered with poisons.  With that said you are still exposed to a certain amount of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, etc because you are alive and breathing.  Drive around the Phoenix valley, or wherever you live, and one will find farm land that uses these toxic chemicals.  Therefore, they go into the air and we all get to share in the exposure.

Now that we know everyone is exposed, what does that mean?  It means your body has to deal with these chemicals and the damage they inflict on a daily basis.  This exposure/damage demands cellular energy, detoxification pathways, and repair mechanisms to name a few processes in the body.  All of these processes require co-factors or vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc to function which we just pointed out are extremely decreased in our food.  If there are less of these co-factors available for the body, then there is more damage to the body because the toxins can’t be properly and timely cleared.

Next point

“… our bodies are under more stress than ever before, and I’m getting old.”

The latter part of this statement can be argued with depending on how old you are.  Yet, I am getting older and as we age we continue to fight the battle against many issues including entropy, a vial opponent.  As we age hormone levels decrease, functionality of enzyme pathways decrease, etc, etc.  I’m just trying to support the system to work as well as it can, as long as it can.

The former section of this statement is in reference to both physical and emotional stress.  For physical stress let’s think about the environmental toxins we are exposed to everyday through our food, water, and air.  We live in Phoenix and are being exposed to all these chemicals swirling in this beautiful Valley of the Sun.  Physical stress can also be sugary or refined foods that spike blood sugars and serum insulin levels, forcing your liver, pancreas, and kidneys to work overtime.  For emotional stress let’s think of our busy lifestyles, stress from work, stress from the financial markets, and on and on.

Why is this constant stress a problem?  It is a problem because our bodies were not designed to handle constant or chronic stress.  The body was designed to be exposed to stress, deal with it, and return to a generally relaxed state.  Short bursts of stress, remember the “Fight or Flight” response from 8^th grade biology?  With the combination of all these modern stressors our bodies hardly ever, or never, get to return to the relaxed state and this slow burning constant stress eventually leads to a “burn out” or chronic disease.

That is the short version of why I personally take nutritional supplements with every meal!