Put out the fire wherever your body burns. When your immune system turns up the heat in your joints, your skin, your brain, your gut, or elsewhere, you need two things from your functional medicine team. You need firefights to put out the flames and you need investigators to identify the arson before another blaze begins. We provide both servcies.
The immune system targets microbial invades with metabolic flame throwers. Viruses and bacteria get burned and drive away but surrounding tissue sometimes gets scorched. Short term this can heal, but with chronic infections, autoimmune disease, or flame throwers that won’t turn off, your body tissues literally overheat.
While you don’t see any flames, you feel the heat. Joints ache. Extremities swell. Skin reddens and itches. Brains grow sluggish and sometimes hurt. Guts pitch fits making eating barely tolerable.
Answers
Conventional medicine begins and ends with sending in pharmaceutical firefighters. Flames are lessened, but without identifying the arsons behind the fires, smoldering hot embers continue low grade damage over time.
Functional medicine begins with more natural firefighters with fewer side effects and seeks to remove sources of the flames. This starts with evaluating dietary contributors to excess inflammation and looking for sources of toxins which throw more fuel on the fire.
From there, work presses into identifying the original firestarter, the arsons such as chronic toxicity, chroinic infection, intestinal dysbiosis, or autoimmune processes stirring up trouble.Methods
Between a comprehensive history and advanced laboratory analysis, we can go beyond labels and provide explanations. Antibodies may point towards Lyme, mycoplasma, EBV, or other microbes. Blood or urine tests may indicate metal toxins, synthetic toxins, or natural environmental toxins are fanning the flames. Stool tests may reveal bacterial or fungal culprits.
Hope
With a clearer picture, a program targeting the arsons and the fire moves past the simple firefighter approach to a more comprehensive root cause long term recovery. A healthy immune system absent unnecessary inflammation promotes our patient’s healthier more abundant life.
A Word from Dr. Potter
We approach every patient regardless of presenting symptoms with the same care and functional root cause approach, seeking to connect with them and help restore the whole person with the best of natural and conventional medicine. Because of these habits of excellence, we see people return to the healthier, more abundant life that God offers them.
Dr. Eric Potter
IFM Certified MD
