Do you have a chronic health condition, or would you like to reduce your risk of developing one in the future and feel better overall?   Chronic disease is frighteningly common in the Western world. We all know people who have a parent or grandparent suffering from dementia, people who are battling cancer, diabetics who have to watch everything they eat, and people who cant participate in an activity because they have a heart condition.

Although we are told by conventional medicine that we don’t know what causes many chronic illnesses, is that really true?  I would argue that we do, in fact, have a solid grasp of the most important factors that contribute to virtually all chronic disease.   This means that it is within our power now to prevent and even reverse many of these conditions.  

Conventional medicine would appear to assume that all modern diseases – diabetes, heart disease, cancer, depression, autoimmune disease, dementia – are unrelated conditions that don’t share a common cause.  In my view, this is a convenient fiction created by the pharmaceutical industry to sell more drugs.  While these conditions do of course have unique features, they all share a common origin: our modern lifestyle.  Poor diet, nutrient deficiencies, stress, lack of pleasure, lack of sleep, lack of or the wrong type of exercise, exposure to toxins and allergens, medications, all directly contribute to the problems that are ruining our health.  

What we know now is that there are a bunch of common underlying factors that lead, downstream, to disease, including those diseases that we associate with early death. These underlying factors are inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, gut dysbiosis, and nutrient deficiency. And depending on your genetics, these factors can show up as heart disease in one person, cancer in another, and diabetes in another.  These factors are caused by biological imbalances, imbalances we can do something about. Yes, for the most part these diseases are preventable IF we understand how to follow a lifestyle (a way of eating, being, exercising, sleeping, relationships, connection, thoughts, life meaning and purpose) that optimises our biological balance.

A lot of people think  that if their parents suffered from a chronic disease, they will too.  Its ‘in the genes’. But that is not necessarily true.  Genes are like a loaded gun, that predispose you towards a condition such as diabetes, but that doesn’t mean you are destined to have that disease.  A gun never kills anyone until someone pulls the trigger. You cant change your genes, but you can change how they express.  All your life inputs affect your gene expression, for better or for worse.  We have the power to influence all of it.  If we eliminate those things that damage health and we add in those things that create health, we can live a long and healthy life.  

Conventional medicine, with its 10-minute appointments, makes supporting patients through lifestyle and behaviour change nearly impossible.  Functional Medicine prioritises such support, for both prevention and healing, which is why the movement has been so proactive and supportive in the creation of the Health Coaching profession.  Health Coaches typically work alongside Functional Health clinicians in order to help patients with diet and lifestyle aspect of the prescribed programme.  

On this page I am going to try and draw together all the systems of the body and the behaviours that influence their function and therefore your health status.  We will look at the importance of the role of your gut and how to heal it, how to optimise your immune system, how to improve your energy production, how to maintain your waste disposal system, how to keep your brain and communication system in top condition, and how to make sure your bones and muscles doesn’t deteriorate.   Separately we will look at the impact on your health of each of key elements of lifestyle:  diet, movement, sleep, detoxification, (with Stress being important enough to get a page to itself).