First, forgive me for using a little sarcasm to get your attention. In reality, we will probably never get a study on the effects of taking multiple supplements. The field of cancer therapy is probably the only time medicine produces study trials with multiple therapies since single therapies rarely work in cancer. For supplements and most medicines, we only get studies on how 1 (at most 2 or 3) therapies work to make someone healthier or not. While this seems so “anti-Evidence based medicine”, it is a reality of medical science that studies looking at the effects of 5 to 10 therapies together is practically impossible.
So what are we to do and why would we at Sanctuary combine multiple therapies together in our protocols? If we wait for every study for every possible combination of therapies, we will be waiting forever. Besides that, we work with unique patients every single day. Even in the studies of one drug therapy at a time, no drug works 100% for everyone. For this reason, medicine has always taken the evidence it has and extrapolated to the unique patient sitting in front of them.
Sometimes, we realize that a drug or supplement which might work for even 90% of everyone else, might be a bad idea for the person in front of us. Sometimes we realize that the person in front of us might be the 1 in 100 who could benefit from this supplement or this combination of supplements. Basically, we use our clinical experience and the collective experience of thousands of other providers over years to make our best judgments for the person who can’t wait ten years for a study to come out.
We live in a reality where patients are suffering today and we have possible therapies that might help them now. If those therapies are safe and have a reasonable chance of helping, we should try them with informed consent explained to the patient. If we collaborate with the patient and they want to try a combination of supplements which we have seen help others multiple times in the past, why should we not try- especially when conventional medicine has said “we can’t help you” or even worse ,“it’s all in your head”.
In summary, functional medicine takes the available evidence from studies on the benefits of individual nutraceuticals and combines those therapies into protocols which repeatedly help patients who were failed by conventional medicine. This is quite similar to the practice of conventional medicine which may have the elderly on 10-15 drugs to cover both the primary chronic conditions and the side effects resulting from such therapies. We are ALL trying to help patients who are suffering rather than sitting around waiting for the perfect study in order to treat the patient staring us in the eyes begging for help. Both conventional and functional medicine are trying to help patients relieve suffering. We at Sanctuary, in practicing functional medicine, just believe our way is a better way to lead our patients to healthier, more abundant lives.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
