Jake Carter (00:00):

Welcome to Health School where we help health professionals create life-changing results for their clients and patients through functional medicine and nutrition, whilst equally helping them scale their business online and attract high value clients. I'm Jake Carter, your host and the founder of The Institute Health. Make sure you sit back, grab your pen books. We're going to dive in deep. So what is functional medicine? That's a question that I get asked every single day, and it's an important one. We can see that it is ranking at the highest level of all time in SEO on Google Trends worldwide. And understandably, before I explain what functional medicine is, I think it's really important for us to unpack a little bit of our current state of health. Well, first of all, the health industry is the most desired and most needed industry in the world today as it stands.

(00:47)
And again, we can compare this into things like Google Trends and look at search terms for fat loss hypertrophy, even biohacking. We can see that health ranks four times higher than its second competitor, which is fat loss. So this is really showing the desire and the attention what health is getting worldwide. The challenge with this is that our healthcare system is possibly more disease care, and understandably, because when we look into disease is quite urgent, it's a necessity to address that. And there's many cases where someone may have got hit by a car, maybe even shot or stabbed depending on where you live, and there's certain intubations which have to take place, and usually it's quite invasive as well when looking at healthcare. On the other hand, it's almost looking in the other direction. And there's many different steps which are required to possibly be paid attention to, invested into nurtured before disease starts to progress.

(01:43)
What I'm going to do in this small podcast today is I'm going to break down some of the stats around health and equally some of the stats around our healthcare system so we can begin to recognize the urgency for functional medicine and how much it can possibly help with your own life or maybe those that you care about. So I'm going to pull up some stats here. First of all, in 2018, the health industry was worth more than eight and a half trillion US dollars, which is absolutely huge. Now, the problem with this is that it's getting more and more expensive to look after our health, and we can see that from organic food, maybe low tax products, or maybe even just living a life which doesn't really create so much constraint around you and enables you to invest into healthful activities, whether that's grounding, walking, you name it.

(02:33)
You have to have a level of flexibility in your life, and equally that can cost money if you're stuck in a job. So when we look into health, I think one of the biggest problems what we face right now is that we're in the denial of the decline of our health. And we can see this worldwide with certain stats. We can see that one in 10 women have PCOS. We can see one in 10 women have endometriosis. We can see that over half a million infants in the United States of America are psychiatric drugs. Now granted, they may be prescribed this to assist with things like bedwetting, but nonetheless, there's many different reasons why they may be wetting the bed and it most likely isn't a medication deficiency. Some other stats we can look into is that seven out of 10 deaths are from chronic disease, and what's heartbreaking about that is that chronic disease is largely preventable.

(03:23)
We can even see that one out of three males have infertile sperm. We can see that one in six Americans have an autoimmune disease, and that's actually more than cancer and heart disease combined together. So our current state of health is really struggling and we're not getting better. We may argue that we're possibly living longer, and this is possibly due to intervention, cleanliness of water, food storage and things like this. However, I would argue that we're dying longer, that our quality of health has been sacrificed for the quantity of life that we experience. And I would even argue that many of us don't have the opportunity to truly experience life because we're confined in a nine to five job. So looking into this, we actually have 24 7 access to food, and this means that we're heavily overfed, but equally undernourished. We can see that more than one out of three individuals in the United States of America have at least 10 minerals that they're deficient in.

(04:17)
And we can see that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975 and is now officially classed as a disease. And subsequently with obesity, there are a number of comorbidities which can come into play such as high blood pressure, such as insulin resistance, such as increased cardiovascular disease risk. And not only is it a burden on the individual's health, but also the economic system as well. On top of this, we can see that the lifestyle that we modernized and we just widely accept as normal, has a number of health consequences with it too. We can see that on average, we spend 18 years of our life sat down, and this is due to the modern day work environments. We can see that we spend over 90% of our time indoors, yet we're designed to be outdoors and get this exposure to sunlight for vitamin D and our circadian health, and we can equally see that the air inside is up to five times more polluted than the air outside of our homes.

(05:13)
So when taking all of this into account, we can see that we have been possibly maladapted to our new environment and we're struggling to cope with these new demands. And this is where functional medicine comes in. Now, before I break down functional medicine, I equally want to go into the current healthcare system, and it's important to recognize that it does a fantastic job, but there's areas where it could definitely be improved. Equally with that, there's also the right time to go for let's say, conventional intervention. And equally, there's a right time when you may want to consider alternative methods as well. Currently, when we're looking into the current healthcare system, we can see that statistically doctors have an average lifespan less than that of their patients, and this just shows the level of stress what doctors are exposed to in their work environment. Now granted, when individuals are stressed, it's going to be harder for them to empathize with patients.

(06:10)
It's going to be harder for them to take their time and understand and guide coach and inspire them to take new actions and new behaviors in their life. We can even see this with nurses. Nurses working 12 and a half hour shifts report committing more than three times as many medical errors than those working eight and a half hour shifts. And those medical errors could be small, it could be something like a wrong name or it could be something quite drastic like the wrong medication. So we can see again the workload, the work demand, which is just put onto these nurses, which are forced to work long shifts and equally compromised the work quality, which really shows the need for functional medicine, a supportive medicine practice to go hand in hand to help people to relieve this burden to equally support society and increase the health in society as well.

(07:00)
When looking into current conventional system, again in the United Kingdom, we can see that doctors spend on average 9.4 minutes with each patient. And with that being the case, it's hard for them again to really build that rapport, to assess, to conclude, to prescribe the very best thing for the individual because we have to recognize and understand the health. What we have is a byproduct of the life that we live and the life that we live is the sum of the foods that we eat and the things that we do. And really, when we see a doctor, we don't really have the opportunity to understand these concepts. And equally doctors, they're not necessarily taught that either. When looking into the current educational system for a doctorate, we can see that they have a maximum. It does flu from where they're taught, but a maximum of four weeks nutritional education.

(07:50)
But yet we have to recognize and appreciate that the nutrients in our body dictates the language of ourselves. That really determines how we function because if we aren't getting the right nutrients, we're going to then become deficient. If we're then deficient, we have dysfunction. And then when we have dysfunction long enough, we can have disease. Hey, if this has been useful so far, we'd love to share some of our resources with you. So simply reach out on Instagram and send the word podcast. Then last but not least, in a 2013 survey, the average number of patient visits a doctor had per day was 19. Now, I dunno about you, but when I used to work as a personal trainer and I used to see 10 to 15 clients in a day, I would be exhausted. I would be wiped out. So then understanding the demands that the average number of patient visits per day was 19, this would be day after day after day, we can see that the stress would compound and no wonder why this is having a burden on doctor's health.

(08:45)
So now we can understand exactly the importance of functional medicine and the requirement. I'm going to break down just 10 benefits of functional medicine and how it can help individuals, and equally how it's different from the current conventional medical model. Now, the first one is that functional medicine is health centric, not disease centric. And what I mean by that is that the current conventional system, let's just use cholesterol as an example. If you have cholesterol and it's trending, go, let's just say it's around 4.5, 4.8, 4.9, 4.9, again five, and then suddenly it's 5.5 intervention won't be done until the cholesterol is above the conventional ranges when it possibly reaches 5.5, but yet we could look at the pattern and see that trends up. So in the current conventional model, we can see that there is this time delay. There's just that waiting until there is the classification of things being a problem before the problem is fixed.

(09:42)
Whereas with functional medicine, it looks to see when problems are possibly about to occur and tries to prevent them by looking at maintaining health rather than addressing disease. Because it is a bit of a spectrum, we can see that we could have disease here and then we could have dysfunction, then we could have deficiency, then we could have normality. And then over here we can have health. Just because this section here is the absence of disease doesn't mean it is equally health itself. So it's really important to understand that it is the opposite end of the spectrum. It's looking in a different direction, and they equally go hand in hand. Now the second point, the second benefit for functional medicine is that the standards are based on health as opposed to the average state of the population. And when we look into those stats and facts, we can recognize and appreciate that well, the average state of the population isn't really a good benchmark to base our lives around.

(10:36)
We could see that. We could argue our health is decaying and we don't want to have that as the standard of quality for life. So instead of using conventional ranges, which may be this far apart, the functional medicine approach is using functional ranges which sit within the conventional ranges. Largely speaking, that may be the odd anomaly. And this then is really focused on this tighter range, which plays within the parameters and the rule book of conventional medicine anyway, but it really protects health from a different set of numbers, ranges, ratios, relationships, and other factors there too. Now the third benefit here of functional medicine is that it appreciates the interconnected systems within the body rather than conventional medicine, which tends to view the body through the lens of a keyhole. It tries to look at the problem at the symptom like this, whereas functional medicine views the symptom as a trap and it appreciates that all the other systems within the body talk to one another and it enables this better flow and function.

(11:37)
A really good example here is a car crash. If someone's had a car crash that might actually have traumatic brain injury and they could have issues with the vagus nerve. Issues with the vagus nerve, could then lead to things like maybe gastroparesis or maybe issues with motility. And that could lead to things like constipation. If someone has constipation, they could have an overgrowth of bacteria, which could then lead to sibo, and that might lead to things like bloating and a hard time digesting certain foods and other gut health related symptoms there as well. So if they were to go and see a GP and a gastroenterologist, they may want to assess those gut health symptoms and then neglect the fact that they should be looking into vagus nerve health. And equally asking the individual if they've experienced a car crash. Here we can see the interdependent systems and how they work with one another in order for our bodies to function.

(12:25)
So we don't disregard that, we recognize that and we try to really get this root cause upstream approach. Benefit number four is that we use patterns, ratios, and relationships to get a deeper understanding into the internal blood work, into the internal symptoms of how our body is really functioning to read the story within us rather than taking everything at face value and looking at it in an isolated situation. Now, for point number five, it is heavily patient-centric, particularly around the consultations. We already spoke about the rushed conventional nine minute consultations that doctors largely have in the United Kingdom. In functional medicine consultations can be upwards of 90 minutes. And not only do they integrate the objective data, possibly using things like blood tests, stool tests, organic acid tests, dutch tests or anything like this, but they equally marry it with subjective questions because it's the subjective questions which give you the story, and it's the objective data which gives you the detail and they go hand in hand to tell you the full, complete picture of the individual.

(13:29)
So it really does require time to assess the individual, to look at visual biofeedback markers, to ask the right questions, to understand how they are saying it, and equally build trust in that relationship so they can feel guided with you and they can follow your advice and follow your plans and have the adherence because at the end of the day, it's not how much you know, but it's how well you can help them understand and trust and follow the system what you provide. Point number six, as I mentioned earlier, it address the root cause rather than masking the symptoms. A good example here is if someone has a headache, the doctor or they just might actually just be used to doing this, they might actually take something like Panadol or paracetamol, but that isn't addressing the root cause of why they have a migraine or why they have a headache.

(14:18)
There are many different reasons. We always have to ask why. In functional medicine we recognize that it's more important to understand the patient than the disease the patient has. Equally, it's more important to understand the client than the goal the client has. So this comes into asking why, seeking to understand before being understood. And for example, in the case of a migraine, it could be anything from dehydration, alcohol, acetyl aldehyde, it could be poor sleep, it could be obstructive sleep apnea. There are many different reasons as to why migraines could occur. So we have to truly understand why, so we can sure we address it at the root cause to hopefully prevent it from coming back in the future. Now, for point number seven, we have to recognize that each person is a unique individual. We can't apply a cookie cutter one size fits all approach.

(15:05)
A really good example here is one man's food could be another man's poison. So when looking into certain foods, there are a number of nutrients, and equally there's a potential number of antinutrients which may come at play here. A prime example with this is let's say high histamine food. A prime example with this is let's say high histamine foods. If someone has mold sensitivity, then they may be more sensitive to histamine inducing foods and that could worsen their symptoms and lead to more fatigues and headaches and things like this. So things like smoked salmon, things like coffee that might not be the best of foods for the individual at that given moment in time. So again, it really comes back into recognizing and appreciating the individual at play there. Now, for benefit number eight, we really emphasize the importance of prevention rather than waiting for someone to fall ill before starting treatment.

(15:55)
And that comes back into the patterns, the relationships, the ratios, and all these other things that we've just talked about. Point number nine is that we tend to use advanced diagnostic testing systems, which maybe aren't that accessible in conventional therapy. The reason for this is because first of all, functional medicine is going to be funded through private funds. It's not going to be government funded. And that means we have access and we have the ability to lean into possibly more expensive treatments and assessment methods. And equally, we are on the ground researching and we have the opportunity to learn and implement the things which are researched in this very moment today. Now, granted, that has to be done through proper ethics and sound researching, such as looking into the publication bias, looking into the P number, the study size, and all these different variables. But if there is sound research which is out there, we have the ability to actually integrate that into the practice, into the therapy, into the protocols, into the assessments, rather than waiting for the standard 17 to 23 year lag measure before something is researched today and then put into medical practice.

(17:03)
And that 17 to 23 year lag measure could cost thousands if not millions of lives. And then finally, point number 10, I already alluded to this, but it uses the very latest proven research rather than relying on outdated information. We have to appreciate and recognize that becoming a doctor is possibly one of the hardest things you can do in the current conventional educational model. It takes a lot of time, a lot of research, and for that to be put into place, it requires a large level of rigorous assessments and maybe funding, which could change the outcome there for certain things to be taught and not taught. And that compounds to that 17 to 23 year delay that I talked about. So there is a huge difference in that between what is researched today over the past five years before has been researched, approved, then put on a mass scale into the education systems to be largely accepted into a doctorate and put into practice there. So as you can see, there is a huge difference between conventional healthcare and functional medicine, and we have to recognize both play a very important part at keeping everyone alive and healthy.

(18:11)
You've made it to the end, and that means not only are you committed to yourself, your business, but also your clients, and we'd love to support you. So whether that means attracting high value clients, scaling your business online, or simply creating life changing results, head over to my Instagram, @MrJakeCarter, and send the word ready.