Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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You Don’t Have Adrenal Fatigue | Stop Making Your Identity a Catch Phrase

For those that aren’t familiar with the adrenal glands, they have huge function in your health expression.  Every second of your day, your nervous system has to organize and coordinate your life experiences:  What you eat, how you think, how you move, wind changes, social influences, spiritual experiences, and congruency in purpose and practices.

With every single item, within microseconds, your nervous system has to decide if these particular influences will cause you harm or cause you happiness.  More often than not, your nervous system will be cautious and engage functions that shift you into immediate survival and protection. The first set of organs that your nervous system talks to are your adrenals.

Functional medicine Colorado SpringsThere are two major hormone groups (but many more) that the adrenals release to help you adapt when life throws curve balls at you.  One group is the catecholamines (adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine, etc) that primarily work on functions of heart rate, blood pressure, muscle contraction, and triggering your brain for reaction over reason.  The other class is cortisol that primarily works to get your body to release stored energy (sugar) to give you instant fuel to escape a potential danger.

The longer someone is in the this state of protection, the more the body creates a default setting into that expression.  And the longer than is expressed, the more apt you favor catabolism (tissue destruction).  This sounds bad but no reaction or symptom is stupid.  These expressions are creating pathways for you to buy time to escape what is potentially life threatening. The more this reaction is repeated, the harder it is to keep up with the demands.  It’s like if you sprinted instead of walked to do everything.  You’re going to get tired.

Tired ≠ Fatigue

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Increasing Premiums are NOT the Problem

As we near the end of 2016, there are multiple reports that health care premiums are going to spike 25% and people are outraged…except for the ones that made the policy and these people below.

If you’re upset and frustrated about your premiums going up, stop.  You should be exponentially more pissed off over the products and services your premiums are providing.  But I’ve never met an insurance broker that goes over the unfeatures of your insurance coverage.

The part that baffles me the most is that people seem to ignore that they are paying a higher premium to access a system that is great in emergencies but has failed miserable in health promotion.  In other words, you keep paying more for access to a system that will NEVER get you better.  It’s about as effective as paying your monthly minimum balance on a 12% interest credit card and expecting to get out of debt.

Our traditional healthcare system provides 2 options.  Drugs and surgery.  The companies that create and supply the products for your doctor to perform a service are publicly traded companies.  Regardless of the industry, a publicly traded company has one goal and that is to create profits for the shareholders.  When a company engages in activities that purposely lower the profits to shareholders, this is called fraud.  This is illegal.

If a pharmaceutical company were to create something that made you healthy and therefore created less need of their product, this would lower profits.  In other words, they would be actively lowering the profits of the shareholders, which is illegal.  Providing a cure would be fraud.

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Not-So-Obvious Toxic Top Ten

More Health, Less Healthcare
More Health, Less Healthcare
Not-So-Obvious Toxic Top Ten
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A replay of the Not-So-Obvious Toxic Top Ten presented at Yoga Studio Satya in Colorado Springs.  This workshop has a slight change of the top 10 from the original post.  You can even follow along with presentation below.

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Hormone Imbalance Treatment

What do you think of when you hear the term ‘Hormone Imbalance?’

Weight Gain?

Loss of Muscle Mass?

Poor Sex Drive?

Fatigue?

Anxiety, Depression, Irritability, or Brain Fog?Hormone Imbalance Treatment

Poor Sleep?

Hot Flashes?

Sugar Cravings?

What hormones come to mind if you’re seeking hormone imbalance treatment?

Estrogen?

Testosterone?

Progesterone?

Thyroid?

These initial impressions just scratch the surface concerning hormone imbalances.  Before you even think about the specific hormones, you should back track and look at what coordinates and organizes your hormones, the nervous system.  If you’re not addressing the nervous system, you’re not getting to the route cause of your hormone imbalance.

The nervous system organizes and coordinates your life. The hormone that is released is just an effect of how your nervous system (you) is interpreting your environment.  This organization can be generally lumped into 2 categories.

Life is organized into PROTECTION or it’s organized into GROWTH.

Dr. Bruce Lipton PhD says it best, “You can’t be in growth and protection at the same time.”

What does that mean for your hormones and the results of your hormone imbalance treatment?  Unless you address the underlying nervous system imbalance, your desired results probably won’t be lasting or satisfactory.

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Finding the Right Doctor…Here’s How.

I get emails and messages every week from people complaining about their doctor.  I get very similar stories each time.

“I want to know nutritional strategies to help my condition but all they do is recommend is a stupid low fat diet.”

“I told them I don’t want medications and all they recommend is drugs.”

“They told me if I don’t get my kid vaccinated, they will kick me out of their office.”

As much as I sympathize with these complaints, it’s not really the doctor’s fault.  As the consumer, you have to do some homework about that doctor you are trying to develop a relationship with more than just looking up if they are covered by your insurance.

There’s a lot of doctors that are covered by your insurance that will do you far more harm than help.  After all, our healthcare system is the 3rd leading cause of death in our country.

Your insurance has covered everything that hasn’t worked for you so far.  What makes you think using your insurance has anything to do with your health outcomes?  Your attitude, your diet, your sleep, your physical activity, your environment, your stress levels are all things that get you better. And guess what?  None of those are covered by your insurance.  No wonder you’re sick.  – Dr. Sachin Patel

You don’t go to a Muslim mosque and get pissed because they didn’t talk about Jesus.   You don’t watch an R rated movie and get complain because there was too much violence and profanity.  So why do you get frustrated stepping into an MDs office and them wanting to prescribe you drugs or give you horrible  nutrition and lifestyle advice?

Contradictions lead to destruction.  The contradiction at play with these destructions is your health outcomes.  We see this pretty evidently with the results of our healthcare system.  Lots of access and interventions, not much health production.

If you take anything away from this post, just remember, ‘contradictions lead to destructions.’  To avoid destruction, you have to clear up contradictions.  To clear up those contradictions, you need to assess your own philosophy and see if that matches the philosophy of your doctor.  If you try and engage this conversation with your doctor and they don’t have time, that probably answers your question.

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