How Functional Medicine Saved My Life
Have you ever gone to the doctor looking for answers as to why you have no energy, have chronic headaches, stomach issues, or just feel “off”?
Yup, me too.
For a good while, I was on a merry-go-round of appointment after appointment, specialist after specialist, scan after scan, all to understand why I was having so many digestive issues, feeling so anxious, sick, and tired ALL THE TIME.
All standard tests were ordered, X-ray, EKG, urine, blood - everything came back “NORMAL”.
“NORMAL.”
That one word that I was so thankful to hear, and yet, left me completely dumbfounded. How could everything be normal if I didn’t feel good?
Not only did I not feel good, I felt sick every day.
By medical standards, I was “healthy” but suffered from a minor social anxiety disorder.
By my own standards, I inherently knew there was something deeper going on, and I was determined to find out.
Functional Medicine Lab Testing
Cue the confetti!
Functional medicine lab testing LITERALLY changed my life.
I discovered this amazing form of medicine by accident, through a podcast, no less. Functional medicine looks at underlying root cause imbalances to understand disease, and likewise, can also be used to help rebalance the body.
In search of health, in search of wellness, I ordered an organic acids test, an at-home urine test which looks at the metabolic waste markers excreted in urine.
The Organic Acids Test is a great indicator of overall health, and can be used to identify bacterial overgrowth in the gut.
The Results
Four weeks after submitting the sample, I spoke with a health coach regarding my results and what they could indicate in terms of my overall picture of health.
I knew that there was something going on with my digestive system based solely on what and how I was feeling. After completing this test, I was able to see the data that confirmed I had bacterial overgrowth. Knowing what I now know about intestinal yeast and bacteria, it was most likely proliferated from the years of medications, pain killers, prescriptions, chronic emotional stress and chronic physical pain that had led me to this state of imbalance.
We know a lot about the gut now. We knew a lot about the gut then, but I felt I was put at a grave disadvantage when it was recommended to me by an urgent care physician that I take antibiotics to sterilize my gut in hopes that it would kill whatever was causing me the intestinal discomfort, never being told the importance of adding back in beneficial bacteria allowed for an overgrowth of pathogenic yeast and bacteria to grow.
Knowing then, what I know now, and I would have respectfully declined.
The Protocol
After reviewing my results, it was recommended that I do a protocol to help remove the bacterial overgrowth and to help rebalance my gut.
I was not mentally prepared for what that might entail, and even though it felt like this was the right thing to do, the logical thing to do, mentally I was not ready for what it would mean to be on a protocol that took three months to complete.
Eventually, I completed the gut protocol as best as I could, and while I did not do it exactly or complete it “perfectly”, holding myself to a perfect standard would have rendered me unable to do it, for fear that any misstep would deem the entire protocol a failure. But, as I’ve learned since then, we do not have to do things perfectly in order to reap the benefits.
This is something that I continue to tell myself with everything I do, not just in the name of wellness, but in all aspects of life.
After my second, and even a third modified go-around at healing my gut, I retested (three years later) and found that my gut was a lot more balanced than it had been previously.
Not only in terms of beneficial and pathogenic bacteria, but overall, many of my markers had shown significant improvement.
B-vitamins which had been low previously were looking good, mitochondrial function was looking good, and overall, I was in a much healthier internal state.
Some of the noticeable benefits were:
Improved digestion
Less bloating
Less chronic pain
Decreased headaches
Less fatigue
More energy
Improved mood
More ambition and drive
Functional lab testing saved my life. Had I continued on the conventional route, I know that I would not be as healthy and as happy as I am today. And while our health is always changing, functional medicine lab testing can help us stay on top of our health, and make adjustments as needed, before anything gets too far out of balance.
Balance is a fundamental key to wellness. When our body is out of balance, we feel it. With functional lab testing, we get to take ownership over our health, our wellness, our energy, and our life, because when your body feels good, you feel good. And when you feel good, anything is possible.
Finding functional medicine lab testing is a game changer. When you don’t know where else to turn to change your state of illness back to one of wellness, look no further than functional lab testing.
I’d love to know, have you ever done a functional lab, and if so, what did you think?