AGE–RELATED DISEASES ARE NOT INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES OF AGING
The Issue: Most of us don’t visit the doctor until we have a definite symptom or have already been diagnosed with a disease. And by that time, the remedies available often involve either expensive medications or invasive surgery.
What if you and your physician could tell what was happening in your body before you had a disease? How about if you knew when you had the earliest symptoms or signs that this disease might be in your future? You could then address the causes before these biological processes resulted in injury to your body’s organs.
The Story: This scenario is now reality in several Portland-area physician offices. Physicians at True North in Falmouth are looking at the human body in a new way, informed by Functional Medicine. According to founder, Jeffrey Bland, PhD, Functional Medicine is : “A new medical paradigm built upon the discoveries of molecular biology is opening up remarkable new ways to keep people healthy all through their lives.” Through intense examination of your personal biology (usually through an extremely detailed history and new, state-of-the-art lab tests), individually-tailored programs can be undertaken that permanently alter potentially harmful processes so that the symptoms and diseases these processes would normally lead to never develop.
Background: Scientists involved with the Human Genome Project and affiliated research now tell us that so-called “age-related” diseases are not inevitable consequences of aging.
Rather, they are now being recognized as the result of a poor match between an individual’s particular genetic needs and the lifestyle choices s/he makes, such as overall diet, specific nutrient intake, lifestyle and environment.
Dr. Jeff Bland, noted researcher and founder of the Institute for Functional Medicine (the preeminent educational institution for teaching physicians and others how to put the data and lessons from the HGP into daily practice) states in his book Genetic Nutritioneering: “A new medical paradigm built upon the discoveries of molecular biology is opening up remarkable new ways to keep people healthy all through their lives.”
Story Elements: Bethany Hays, MD, True North Medical Director, was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM). She can explain (in layperson’s language) the science underlying this new work.
Several of Dr. Hays’ patients are willing to be interviewed or shown in a typical encounter. Other True North physicians have taken a number of IFM courses and can describe how they are using this ground-breaking information to retool and update their Internal Medicine, Psychiatry and Family Medicine practices.
Contact: Chris Bicknell Marden, Director of Development, (207) 781-4488, cbmarden@truenorthhealthcenter.org
