Today was officially our first day of clinic and although I had a few "first-day jitters," it turned out to be a pretty amazing day.
I was reminded of something that I thought I would share. In the past, I've come across a lot of people who believe they are "too far gone." By that, they meant that they've suffered with the same or more symptoms over the years, and because it's been 10, 20 or 30 years going, they don't believe there is any solution.
Unfortunately, our medical system feeds into this: If you have a chronic condition, let's treat it with pharmaceuticals for the rest of your life. It's the "band-aid" approach. Then you have specialists who honestly don't have any additional advice they can give you (either because you don't fit into their cookie-cutter symptom picture, or you're unresponsive to their treatment) and can't take you further. You've gone this far through the medical system. You're seeing the guy who knows everything about that organ of the body and are devastated when you realize he has no other tools in his toolbox.
Enter naturopathic medicine.
At least, that's been my personal experience, but I know it's a fairly reoccurring theme in our population.
I think the body is able to heal itself if you help it do so. When you burden your body with toxic substances, foods that are hard to digest and process, foods that deplete your energy, anything that works against your normal functioning, your body needs a little help. Your liver is an amazing organ that helps you detox, but there's a threshold: It can only work so hard for you. The same goes for your adrenals. You can be stressed out for only so long before your adrenal glands get so tired of pumping out cortisol that they become exhausted.
But usually the damage is reversible (not always - but there's a good chance we can make the situation better). Hypertension and diabetes are both great examples of this. Our profession is great at helping patients to reverse these conditions IF the patient really does their work. It's not easy being healthy in our society- with Starbucks on every corner, McDonalds in every WalMart, processed foods and their sneaky ingredients- but the benefits of doing so will blow you away.
So my message today is that it's never too late. It's never too late to change. It's never too late to make a difference in your life.
