I’m listening to Fitter Food Radio episode 11 with Jo Gamble on Embracing Nutrition.
It is quite fascinating. Focusing on Jo Gamble explaining the value of functional medicine for health.
Jo is a nutritional therapist and functional medicine practitioner who specialises in alternative treatment for cancer.
I’m getting to know the show so I can only comment on this episode. I’m always interested in different approaches to help and I like the way Jo tells her story. So I share for reference.
Functional medicine certainly sounds interesting but so do most approaches in the hands of a good promoter. The problems cited with the existing health system we’ve all heard before. I like the holistic approach we hear from Jo.
Though I’m still curious how much we really know and how much relies on the ability of the practitioner. The same can be said for the existing system as much for alternatives.
Jo makes the point that
doctors knowledge of nutrition is often not as good as our own
Given how much Doctors are required to know along with the lack of support to help them gain this knowledge and keep it up to date. I feel it is important to keep considering other ways of achieving the same result. Helping people gain health.
What are the things Jo says are critical to preventing cancer through lifestyle
- enough sleep: atleast 8 hours
- stress: too much leads to problems.
These are the things I see across all diseases. The same lifestyle factors leading to disease. Lack of sleep prevents your body fixing itself and dealing with problems. Of course this leads to disease, why would it not.
To much stress overworks you creating too much damage. It also prevents sleep and thus stops any repair.
Thanks to Matt Whitmore and Keris Marsden for an excellent show.
What is Functional Medicine?
Wikipedias introduction is
Functional medicine reflects a systems biology approach which involves an analysis of how all components of the human biological systeminteract functionally with the environment over time. The Institute for Functional Medicine contrasts this approach with an organ system biology broken down into modern medical specialties.
Functional medicine, in agreement with modern medicine, holds that the entire “patient story” needs to be heard and understood in context in order to truly help the patient.[6] Where functional medicine differs from mainstream medicine is its willingness to employ treatments and drugs which may not be well evidenced by clinical research, including orthomolecular medicine and detoxification of unevidenced toxins.