Have you ever been prescribed a drug or treatment that you intuitively knew was not complete enough to solve your problem? How satisfied were you with the result?

Did that motivate you to cut through marketing, dogma and wishful thinking to find out what is actually going on internally and get realistic solutions?

Many therapies, conventional or alternative, are applied in the hope of managing symptoms in a “try this, try that” approach without treating, or even reliably investigating, the underlying causes.

The ‘single cause fallacy’: a medication or treatment for a single cause will cure a complicated condition. It may be good for marketing medicines but does not correspond to what is scientifically known about the multiple causes of chronic conditions.

There remains a big gap between the sciences and clinical health. Many medicines and procedures are used that are not evidence based (are not supported by objective evidence that has established their effectiveness), but are sustained by habit, dogma, conformity or monetary interest.

Doctors should be open to information that challenges their beliefs and expectations.

See the Lapis Light Functional Medicine Community Blog—practical news for clinicians and patients.

Functional Medicine–the BioConscious® Model

Alternative or complementary? No.

Conventional label-based symptom suppression? No.

Change the causes and you’ll change the result. Fail to change the causes and the same thing keeps coming back.An important part of my job is to help my patients feel safe and supported enough to take action. The functional approach emphasizes identifying and treating underlying causes.

It requires a sound biological basis for every intervention plus objective evidence of effectiveness.

Each person is unique. You might need a different treatment than someone else with the same diagnosis. We don’t give treatment recommendations based on a diagnostic label. Instead we investigate to understand why and how things are happening.

Your genetics are not ‘written in stone’. The expression of your genetic potential is highly modifiable and strongly influenced by epigenetic factors: lifestyle, environmental, therapeutic, even what you think and believe. All of our treatment interventions are ‘genetic response modifiers’–they aim to ‘turn on’ helpful genes and ‘turn off’ the harmful ones.

What are the top three most important organs for your health?

  1. your brain
  2. your brain
  3. your brain

Of course all the other systems are important, but the emerging science is showing that accelerated degeneration of the brain and nervous system is involved with most chronic conditions, and is the single most important biological factor for quality of life and healthy aging. Everyone is losing brain cells each day, but many of us are losing them at a faster rate than we should. When they’re gone, they’re gone forever. You need a strategy to take care of your brain. Can you learn and remember things as easily now as fives years ago?

To get the right answers you have to ask the right questions—then connect the dots to see the whole picture.