As a Functional Medicine Nutrition Practitioner, I am drawn to work with people who have confusing, complicated cases. I LOVE sitting down with a stack of labs, an interview, and a case history, and working to help a client connect the dots, so they can create a path out of their health-challenge-wilderness. They want a root-level solution.
Many people who are experiencing a complex health challenge WISH someone would do this for them.
This is where Functional Medicine and Functional Nutrition providers fill the gap left open by the insurance-model of health care, because not every health problem fits into the diagnose-prescribe-treat model. A 7-12 minute office visit simply isn’t sufficient to gather the information needed to create a root-cause resolution solution for complex illnesses.
While Functional providers are trained to make sense of complexity, there is no reason why YOU, as a client or patient, can’t play this game as well. You can uncover important details about your own health challenge, and be an integral player on your health team.
But how do Functional Medicine and Functional Nutrition providers do this work? What can you, a patient or client learn about your own case by doing some of your own legwork?
The Functional Nutrition Timeline and Functional Nutrition Matrix are two tools you can use to do this.
I’d like to share more about these two simple but radical health care tools, so you can play with them yourself and work to unlock your case mysteries and clarify your healing path.
The Right Functional Medicine Tools are Key for Success
Before I was introduced to these two tools by my mentor and teacher Andrea Nakayama of the Functional Nutrition Alliance, I was using a complicated spreadsheet that tallied a client’s self-reported symptoms with points.
Not only was it hard for both me and my clients to use, but the clinical value of the information was hard to glean.
The Functional Nutrition Timeline and Matrix are two user-friendly and intuitive tools that help clinicians think into a case systematically. Nakayama adapted the Functional Medicine Timeline and Matrix that The Institute for Functional Medicine teaches in its clinical training coursework for use in her Functional Nutrition clinic and training programs.
One of the most important things she noticed was needed when you are struggling with a complex health challenge is a framework to help clarify what is happening in your body and why. You need to discover where to look upstream for source problems. The Timeline and Matrix are the tools that help us do this.
The Functional Nutrition Timeline
The Functional Nutrition Timeline is essentially what it sounds like: it’s a chronological map of your health issues throughout your life, including detailed information all the way back to your parents’ and grandparents’ health.
This is often intuitive for people looking for answers about their difficult health problem. Those of us with puzzling symptoms have been known to pore over all the details, hoping to reveal a new clue to reveal answers. We think if we can note enough details, the picture will become clear.
I once interviewed a woman with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), a connective tissue disorder. When she presented a timeline she created of her illness to her doctor, he looked at her a little funny and said, “I had another patient do the same thing, and they were my only other EDS patient.”
In most cases, the emergence of a more chronic health problem is not something that just happens out of the blue. There is often a confluence of many events that collectively created it.
Correctly identifying these triggers can help you to understand where you need to work to resolve your issue at its most upstream location. The Functional Nutrition Timeline helps you do this.
To create a Functional Nutrition Timeline I use an extensive health history and interview with my clients. In the health history, I ask them about their background: their birth, childhood, teen years, significant life events, injuries, illnesses, travel, stresses, potential environmental threats, like indoor air quality in their place of work or in their home, and so on.
But as you live inside your own body, you can review your own situation and your own history. You know it better than anyone.
You want to note not only the health events you have experienced, but you also want to make note of what may have triggered those events. Anything that you feel is important should be noted.
You must also explore the particularities of your situation. How did your condition evolve and change over time? When did it begin? When did it get better or worse? What other conditions are contributing?
This information may be useful in and of itself, but provides a whole new perspective when collated onto the Functional Nutrition Timeline.
I am regularly surprised by the power of making connections on the timeline. For example, a client shared that they began having seizures at one point in their history. I suspected environmental toxins as a cause, and asked about them. But later, I asked whether there had been any history of car accidents.
The client had been in a significant car accident 3 months previous to the onset of seizures. The client had never made this connection, nor had the various doctors to whom they had gone trying to figure out the issue.
Understanding the specific demons we are confronting helps us craft effective solutions! In this client case, the missing connection between the seizures and a likely traumatic brain injury kept them from the most appropriate care. To best help yourself heal, you must understand the breadth and depth of what you are facing, and how it came to be.
TIMELINE ACTION STEP:
You can create your own Functional Nutrition Timeline by mapping out significant health events in your own life. Map them out in any way that makes sense to you.
Once you have things mapped out chronologically, consider what you know to be true about what might have triggered those events: Were you recently sick? Was there a recent stress event, like a change of job, sick child, divorce, money stress, or whatever else you can think of? Did the onset of symptoms correlate with another health event, like a pregnancy or surgery? Note the potential triggers on the timeline.
What can you learn about the evolution of your health challenge throughout your life? Make some notes, and consider asking your trusted health provider about this at a future visit.
The Functional Nutrition Matrix
Functional Medicine practitioners keep a holistic view, and no detail is too small to take note of. While creating the Functional Timeline helps you understand the big picture of what we’re dealing with and why it’s happening, creating the Functional Matrix helps you understand which body systems need attention, and helps you craft the skills to address them.
I like to refer to the Functional Matrix as your case map. First, it summarizes the top highlights of the Timeline on the left-hand side by noting the Antecedents (family history), Triggers, and Mediators.
In the center area, we make note of your current symptoms and relevant lab results, and mark them in the body area that is affected: Gut, Immune, Mind-Spirit-Emotions, Oxidative Stress and Fatigue, Hormones and Neurotransmitters, Structural Integrity, Environmental Inputs, and Detoxification.
Looking at your case details in this way helps you organize the complex, overlapping symptoms, and helps you prioritize your approach.
On the right hand side, we add in the all-important realm of skills, which represent the actual on-the-ground actions we will take to work on shifting the terrain of illness. This includes Sleep & Relaxation, Exercise & Movement, Nutrition & Hydration, Stress & Resilience, and Relationships & Networks.
This one sheet of paper can summarize your case history, your current situation, and what you’re already doing to help yourself, and where you want to go. It can help you see clusters of symptoms, and help them feel less random.
Having a completed Matrix can also help make the most of that short office visit with your other providers by giving them the most important context of your illness. It can save them the time of needing to work hard to discover all of this via interviewing, so they can focus on crafting care solutions.
Not only that, but I find that it helps educate clients about the physiology of what is happening inside their own body. For example, many clients don’t understand that food cravings can indicate a hormonal or neurotransmitter problem, or that fatigue can be an indicator of liver health. Understanding these connections can open the doorway to solutions that you hadn’t previously imagined.
But even more important than the Timeline and Matrix themselves are the conversations that open up between you and your providers to help connect the dots. Ultimately, the best Functional Medicine tools position you in a new relationship with your body, highlighting self-knowledge, personal empowerment, and connection to the intricate inner workings of your body and psyche.
MATRIX ACTION STEP:
Draw an 8-arm star in the center of a piece of paper (see the picture above for an example). Label them with Gut, Immune and Inflammatory, Environmental Conditions, Oxidative Stress and Energy Levels, Detoxification, Hormone and Neurotransmitters, Mind/Spirit/Emotions, and Structural Integrity.
Note your varied symptoms in each area of the Matrix. Is there a particular area (or areas) where your symptoms cluster? See if you can take an action to lessen the burden of the symptoms in that area.
To learn more about how I can help you use Functional Medicine tools like the Timeline and Matrix to help you walk your own personal Road to Recovery, grab your copy of Roadmap to Recovery here
When you’re ready to learn more about creating your own Functional Nutrition Timeline and Matrix with my support, schedule a free 30-minute Assessment Session with me. We’ll discuss how I can help you make sense of the complex details of your case, and create a plan for moving forward.
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