This Saturday I will be speaking at the Mind Alive Conference on a topic that I am very passionate about, “The Functional Medicine Approach to Mental Health”.
This conference is a one day event dedicated to natural approaches for common mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar and schizophrenia.
My topic will focus on the individualized treatment of mental health conditions using functional medicine testing and treatment. Functional medicine is, in all certainty, the future of all disease treatment and management. As computer systems and cheaper functional testing become more readily available, not only will we be able to better locate systems in our bodies that need attention, we will likely be able to treat them without even taking a pill! It will be sooner than later that drugs are no longer the focus of our health care system for people suffering with chronic disease.
My lecture will focus on the major areas that contribute to mental health conditions. It is fairly clear now that inflammation from stress, trauma (emotional and physical), infections and toxins from our environment interact with our genetics, hormones, digestion and immune systems leading to chronic disease. Psychoneuroimmunology is an area of research that is focused on how our immune systems are actually the cause of most mental health disorders. Nutritional deficiencies can result from this chronic inflammatory state, which is a key part of the functional medicine approach to all mental health disease treatment.
Although drugs can play a major role is stabilizing symptoms and sleep. These treatments can really only work short term if the cause of the problem is not addressed.
If you don’t believe me …. check out Dr Kelly Brogan at http://kellybroganmd.com/. She knows what’s up. Also take a read through this great article on the topic http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3238082/.