Integrated Natural Medicine
Integrated natural medicine is primary care. It is using natural foods and supplements to create a change in your physiology/function. The only medicine that has stood the test of time…thousands of years…is natural medicine. Foods and plants have been used to resolve infections, pain, and other ills since the beginning of documented time. If you think antibiotics were an upgrade, consider the creation of the new antibiotic resistant bacteria (flesh eating bacteria, etc.)…centuries of using plants to cure illness never created a “super bug” of which we have several now.
Modern integrated natural medicine has become more scientific (if not the most scientific medicine) along with pharmaceuticals and surgery. (You can’t do a double blind study on surgery, can you?) We use state of the art laboratory analysis to test functional and pathological conditions, and our safety record is sensational. People do not die from food or plants for the most part. By comparison, in 2003, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported the 195,000 deaths were attributed to the medication people were taking to get well…that’s one every 3 minutes or so.
Integrated natural medicine works in harmony with natural biochemistry. It involves using vitamins, minerals, and plant nutrients (micronutrients), or fat, protein, and carbohydrates (macronutrients), to create a change in biochemistry. For example, blood sugar will elevate when you eat a carbohydrate (sugar or starch), but it won’t if you eat a protein or fat. Inflammation levels will rise when you eat bread with margarine and will lower when you eat blueberries. Stress hormones will rise when you drink caffeine and will lower when you eat greens. B vitamins improve conversion of sugar into energy, the lack impairs the process. Magnesium relaxes muscle, and the lack of it can produce cramps. Finding the correct balance of food and supplements for your genetic profile to create ideal balanced chemical health is possible and attainable using what nature requires for normal biochemistry: protein, fat, carbohydrates and nutrients.
Whereas most medications block or inhibit an enzyme, which is interfering with normal natural biochemistry. While it is true, that medications can resolve crisis, or extend life in one who refuses to change their diet, activity and supplements, it is not the solution to chronic illness. I often use the analogy that drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, or snorting cocaine WILL change your perception of reality…you will feel different…but they in no way improve your health. I am not putting medication in the same category, or even comparing apples to apples, but the general concept is true. Medications alter your biochemistry abnormally; and therefore, they will only seem useful if you have abnormal biochemistry…which is an imbalance of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and nutrients.
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