Functional & Integrative Medicine, Mental Health and Wellness

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Our Approach to Holistic Healing

Our approach is to establish a partnership and relationship that is based on trust and personal responsibility through holistic healing. Through communication and coaching, improved health and wellness are achievable through

Functional & Integrative Medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership. It is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century.

By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, functional medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. Functional Medicine practitioners spend time with their patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease. In this way, Functional Medicine supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual.

By now, most people are aware that the gut has an impact on your mood, overall health, and wellbeing. There is a sophisticated communication system between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain. The two are able to send messages bi-directionally via the vagus nerve. Studies show that the state of the gut (it’s microbiome) is linked to anxiety, depression, mood disorders, and autoimmune diseases.

Why Is Gut Health So Important?

Optimal gut health has become a prominent focus in 21st century health. Having too many bad critters hanging out in the gut has been linked to numerous problems – including but not limited to: anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorders, autism, weight gain, obesity, diabetes, allergies, autoimmunity, cancer, heart disease, fibromyalgia, eczema, and asthma. The links between chronic illness and an imbalanced microbiome (or gut bacteria) keep growing every day.

Many scientists have begun to refer to the gut as our second brain, an idea that is reflected in amazing books like The Good Gut, Brainmaker, The Microbiome Solution, and The Gut Balance Revolution.

Having a healthy gut should mean more to you than being annoyed by a little bloating or heartburn. It becomes central to your entire health and connected to everything that happens in your body. That’s why I almost always start treating my patients’ chronic health problems by fixing their guts first.

You can begin to understand the importance of gut health when you consider there are 500 species and three pounds of bacteria in your gut. There are trillions of bacteria in your gut, and they collectively contain at least 100 times as many genes as you do. The bacterial DNA in your gut outnumbers your own DNA by 100 times. You have about 20,000 genes, but there are 2,000,000 (or more) bacterial genes!

Altogether, your gut is a huge chemical factory that helps to digest food, produce vitamins, regulate hormones, excrete toxins, produce healing compounds and keep your gut healthy.

So what are some signs your gut is unhealthy?

1. Poor immune system: Getting sick frequently and prolonged recovery time.

2. Brain fog and forgetfulness: Unfortunately these symptoms are very common in my practice. I find my clients don’t take these signs as seriously as they should. If you’re feeling “out of it” or forgetting things more than you used to, your gut needs attention.

3. Anxiety, depression, mood disorders: Mental health has been linked to gut dysbiosis. [LINK to research]

4. IBS, diarrhea, gas, or bloating: If you’re getting diarrhea often, it’s a sign that your microbiome is unbalanced or permeable.

5. Autoimmune Disorders: Lupus, Hashimoto’s, and Rheumatoid Arthritis are signs that the gut isn’t functioning properly.

6. Fatigue: Especially fatigue that lasts throughout the day regardless of how much sleep you’ve had.

7. Intense sugar/carb cravings: An imbalance of “bad” bacteria will cause cravings to be amplified. These microbes can’t get enough carbs or sugar.

8. Nutritional Deficiencies: If the gut bacteria is unbalanced or the gut lining is permeated, nutrients cannot be absorbed which will lead to nutrient deficiencies even if you are supplementing.

9. Inflammation: Most chronic illness is the result of Systemic Inflammation – a chronic, subclinical state of inflammation throughout the body. Where this war begins is in the gut, specifically in the colon. In fact, the colon has been found to have a denser population of bacteria than any other place on the planet!

10. Food Intolerance: Your immune system sees the food you have eaten as an invader. Hence, the responses result from your natural defense mechanism protecting your body from the invasion. This occurs because your stomach cannot properly digest a particular type of food. The food in question may also cause stomach irritation.

11. Weight Gain: Your microbiome may also impact the production of hunger hormones, such as ghrelin, which control if you feel hungry or full. An unhealthy gut microbiome can increase inflammatory markers, which may lead to weight gain and metabolic disease.

How to Heal the Gut

Most people have been eating a bad diet for decades, so it’s important to be patient as the gut heals. You will start noticing positive affects in only a few short weeks, but fully healing the gut can take 3-6 months. It’s important to stay committed.

The Functional Medicine Approach

When it comes to your health, you want to make sure that you’re approaching it at the right angle to ensure that all of your needs are met. As medical technology and knowledge gathering have improved over the years, different forms of medicine that cater to patients’ specific needs and wants have been developed. One of the more popular approaches to improving health involves functional medicine, which focuses on underlying causes of illness that are influenced by genetic predispositions and the environment in which one lives in.

Functional medicine typically utilizes individualized therapies to identify what exactly is causing your problem and implements special testing to assess whether imbalances developed prior to the disease or were a result of treating chronic illness. The functional medicine approach centers around the idea that one condition can have many causes or conversely, that one cause can have many conditions. For example, you could be suffering from one condition, like depression, that is caused by Vitamin D deficiency, low thyroid and antibiotic use, or you could be experiencing depression, heart disease, arthritis and diabetes that all stem from inflammation.

Many functional medicine providers use the GOTOIT framework to get to the root cause of a patient’s issues. “GOTOIT” stands for Gather, Organize, Order, Initiate and Track, and each of these steps is followed to determine unhealthy patterns, find the root cause of their problem and create personalized treatments and lifestyle modifications to treat the issues. This strategy is essential in finding imbalances prior to the onset of disease and restore maximum function between all mental health and physiologic functions in the body.

How Integrative Medicine Differs

On the same hand as functional medicine, integrative medicine functions in a similar, yet different, way as it seeks to evaluate the patient as a whole and not just as a disease. Integrative medicine views the patient as a combination of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs that are interdependent on each other and affect the entire well-being of the person. Since there are so many different parts to address, integrative medicine often uses a combination of multiple therapies such as behavioral therapy, physiological, homeopathic and energy work to provide thorough treatment in all areas. Some of the principles of integrative medicine include:

• The patient and practitioner are equal partners in the healing process

• Natural and less invasive interventions are preferred

• All factors that affect one’s health are considered, including mind, body, spirit and community

• Treatment is tailored to the individual’s unique needs, condition and circumstances

• All healing sciences are implemented to encourage the body’s natural, innate healing responses

A good way to describe integrative medicine is taking the traditional approach to health and combining it with less conventional therapies. Natural therapies are preferred over traditional methods, but traditional treatments are still implemented/ referred-out when natural options have been exhausted/aren’t working. Integrative medicine also encourages healthy behaviors and skills that will be necessary for the patient as they follow through with the self-care techniques needed to remain disease-free.

Choosing Which Approach Works Best For You

Now that we understand functional and integrative medicine, how do you determine which method is best for you? In all honesty, we use a combination of the two when evaluating a patient, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that both are needed for optimal care, treatment and recovery.

Improve Your Health With Our Help!

At South Tampa Therapy, we provide both functional and integrative medicine methods to effectively treat your unique issues. Whether you’ve been dealing with a physical, mental or emotional problem, we can provide you with multidisciplinary services. Call or text 813-240-3237 or schedule a consultation:

https://SouthTampaTherapyBOOKAPPT.as.me/FunctionalTransformationalCoaching and get your health back!