What is Functional Nutrition?

by Amanda Malachesky | May 21, 2018 | Functional Medicine and Coaching, Functional Nutrition

So what are Functional Nutrition and Functional Medicine, and how can it help you if you are chronically ill? Though it’s been around for 30-some-odd years, and it’s been growing by leaps and bounds in the last few years, the average person doesn’t know what Functional Nutrition and Functional Medicine is. Even people I would expect to be in the know are confused about what it is.

Functional Nutrition and Functional Medicine are an emerging holistic health care approach that will likely become a default part of the medical system within the next 5 years.

Functional Nutrition and Functional Medicine provide the kind of care that a growing number of chronically ill people with confusing health problems need to get better. It is also valuable for everyone else.

There are three fundamental principles of Functional Nutrition

1. Work to uncover the root causes of health challenges and address them at the source

Conventional treatment, though sometimes necessary, usually doesn’t try to uncover the why behind a symptom or diagnosis. You go to the doctor to get a diagnosis and maybe a prescription or other treatment. Though diagnoses are important, and can properly frame the problem, the challenge is that they are simply a label, and standard treatments do not necessarily lead to remission.

Functional Nutrition and Medicine practitioners help you dig through your case details to help identify the probable sources of your health distress.

Once the sources are identified, your practitioner helps you create a plan to remove the root causes, so your body can heal. In Functional Nutrition, this plan may include diet changes, shifts in sleep and exercise habits, stress reduction techniques, supplements to correct deficiencies, use of functional lab tests, and referral to additional practitioners.

If this work isn’t done, the situation that created the problem in the first place is likely to continue. You may need treatments and therapies to deal with symptoms forever, while never getting any closer to resolution. Does this sound a little like a hamster wheel?

2. Use tools and frameworks to clearly identify problems and possible solutions

There are many variables at play in your life that are affecting your health, but it can be overwhelming to organize these details, and to decide what the best path forward should be.

As my own chronic illness case unfolded, I had a file full of test results, food journals, forms I had filled out at doctor’s offices, notes from conversations I had with health providers, and more. I know many of you also have “the file”.

I also tried a lot of natural treatment protocols and diets that I thought might help, based on my symptoms. I would haphazardly add and subtract things from my life on a dime.

The trouble with this shotgun approach is that though you might get lucky, you’re mostly shooting in the dark. If you don’t have a systematic way to evaluate what you’re doing, or you don’t know how your signs and symptoms fit together in the whole, you’re truly flying blind.

In Functional Nutrition, we use tools, systems, and frameworks rather than protocols to help organize all the information that is relevant to your case. The tools show us where our efforts will be most useful, and track the metrics that matter. Using this information, we continue adapting your action plan so it fits with what works for your body.

3. Honor clients and patients as truly unique and “bioindividual” people, discover what’s true for the individual, and tailor recommendations to those people.

If ten of you have heart disease, you are likely to get very similar prescriptions for treatment. Statins. A Mediterranean diet. Maybe blood pressure medication. Quit smoking. Get exercise.

The trouble is, the root causes of the heart disease is different and unique for each of the ten people. For some it might be diet related, for others stress, and for others still, it may have to do with genetics or something else entirely.

And because we know heart disease is largely driven by lifestyle factors, resolving the root causes will require lifestyle shifts. Yet what a person is capable of changing, and how fast they can change it will be unique to each individual.

In Functional Nutrition and Functional Medicine, we acknowledge, fundamentally, that each client or patient is unique, and needs a unique and tailored prescription of care. Not only this, but whatever solutions we offer must fit with the client’s lifestyle, and be able to be sustained, or no real change will be possible.

Functional Nutrition uniquely fills a gap in conventional as well as Functional Medicine care. Certainly, we need doctors and hospitals, and they are experts at diagnosing and treating life-threatening, emergency, and pathological illnesses.

Yet there is a growing population of people who are sick, and need more high-touch, one-on-one, expert support care than doctors offer to restore their health. They need more frequent help and guidance, and help linking their behaviors and habits with the results they want to see.

And the truth is that most of these people are chronically ill with complex health conditions or overlapping and multiple diagnoses. According to the CDC, current statistics are 1 in 2 Americans has a chronic disease, while 1 in 4 has multiple chronic diseases.

If you are one of these chronically ill people with confusing health challenges, and you want root-cause resolution and restored function, then Functional Nutrition and Functional Medicine may be a good fit for you.

A Functional Nutrition Practitioner can help you do the detective work on your case to uncover YOUR root causes, and create a plan to restore your health, or manage your diagnosis long-term in the best possible way with the most quality of life.

Where to Find A Functional Nutrition or Functional Medicine Practitioner

There are several places to find a Functional Nutrition Practitioner or Functional Medicine Doctor. Many Functional practitioners work online, and may be able to help you even if you don’t live near them. Try these links to practitioner directories:

Functional Nutrition Alliance

Functional Diagnostic Nutrition

Institute for Functional Medicine

Learn about how to work with Amanda as your Functional Nutrition Coach.

Have you tried to create root-cause resolution with your own chronic illness or complex health challenge? Share about your experience below!

Want to see what it would look like to apply Functional Nutrition to your own health challenge? Grab a free copy of Roadmap to Recovery: How to Get Beyond Your Symptoms and Create A Personalized Plan to Restore Your Health. It’s got easy action steps to get started, and you’ll get my favorite tool as a bonus in one of my follow up emails.

What to Ask Your Doctor When You Have a Chronic Illness

by Amanda Malachesky | Mar 26, 2018 | Functional Medicine and Coaching

I’ve spent a lot of time during this last year hearing stories from women with chronic, long-term illnesses.

I’m not talking about colds that won’t go away. I’m talking about women who can hardly get out of bed, who can’t drive due to pain or frequent seizures, or migraine headaches, or can’t hold a job because of crippling fatigue. I’m talking about chronic illnesses that are challenging to shift in any positive direction.

I’m talking about things like Fibromyalgia, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Lupus, Chronic Lyme Disease, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), Hashimoto’s or Graves disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s Disease, Endometriosis, Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) (mold and biotoxin illness), and often times, many of these conditions occur together.

And these women often look “ok” on the outside, so the people around them, including their doctors, don’t necessarily believe them when they explain how difficult life is, how hard they have to work just to get dressed.

And though many of these courageous women have tried everything they can think of to feel better, they only make small gains, if any.

But one woman last week told me that she wished there had been a fact sheet for her that helped her know what questions to ask her doctor, because she noticed there was a steep learning curve after her diagnosis. It took her some time to get educated about how to work with her doctor.

As a Functional Nutrition Coach, I walk the wide-open space between the diagnoses and basic instructions physicians give their patients to manage them, and the down-to-earth, day-to-day behaviors that patients need to make to support their wellness.

This is nowhere more important than with chronic illness, but most of these suffering people aren’t given an appropriate road-map to follow. And though many people can only make small gains in their case, when you are bed-bound, small gains may give you the edge you need to experience a better quality of life.

Here are 5 questions I think are useful to ask your doctor, when you have a chronic illness:

1. Will the treatments (medications or therapies) you are recommending reduce symptoms, or will they lead to remission? What are the alternatives?

Before agreeing to make use of pharmaceutical or other treatments, it’s important to give a full informed consent to your doctor, so that you fully understand the risks and rewards of the treatment. To clearly decide to invite a treatment into your body, you need to understand what each proposed treatment is aiming to do, and what the possible side-effects may do to your body. Will they reduce your symptoms at a cost of organ damage? Long-term effects? Will the side effects create a need for additional medications that may be harmful?

If your doctor doesn’t know how to answer these questions, you may want to explore the current research yourself, or ask your doctor if they would be willing to help you do this.

Remember, you get to decide whether to agree to a treatment. Be fully informed and educated about all the possible outcomes. Ask lots of questions, and work with your doctor to find treatment paths that provide the greatest benefit with the least harm.

2. Are you willing to communicate with other providers on my team, even alternative health providers? How can my other team members best connect with you?

Doctors routinely communicate with other providers that they have referred their patient to, to follow up on the results of that consultation. But some are not as willing to interface with allied health providers like nutritionists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and so on.

But people with chronic illness often have many doctors and allied providers helping them with their care. Having a connected team provides a better outcome for patients, and allows the team to all work together in the best interest of the patient, and to better understand the full picture of their situation.

You can request a release of information form from your doctor’s office, to facilitate the conversation. Your doctor can’t legally communicate with other providers without permission from you.

3. What does the literature say about my diagnosis?

Many people with chronic illness spend time researching the medical literature about their diagnoses, and this is a good thing, because many medical doctors aren’t necessarily well-versed in your diagnosis, especially if it’s uncommon or they haven’t yet encountered it in practice. Their practices are often so busy that they don’t have time to read up on the latest research.

It’s estimated that clinical research takes an average of 7-10 years to trickle down to common medical practice.

Asking this question may encourage your physician to look into your diagnosis, better informing your care. If they are already informed, then you are now able to have a higher-level conversation about the choices available to you.

4. How do you feel about me trying alternative treatments before resorting to more intensive solutions?

This question is for readers who would like to avoid medications if possible. Because conventional treatments often come with unintended or unwanted “side” effects that can complicate the situation, when deemed safe by your provider, in some situations it makes sense to try low-cost, low-risk measures with a potential for benefit first, before resorting to bigger guns.

If you hold the worldview that you’d rather try low-impact choices first and that you’d like to be in charge of making your medical decisions, but your doctor doesn’t support this view, it may be time to find a provider who will support you in making the choices YOU determine are best for you. Remember, your doctor works for YOU, not the other way around!

5. Do you know of any specialists or other modalities who/that might be able to help me heal my diagnosis?

Your doctor may have a colleague who is known for their work with similar conditions or diagnoses, or know that certain therapies are helpful, but may not share about them if you don’t ask. Just last week, a woman told me that she had avoided physical therapy for her severe joint pain, because exercise of any kind hurt. When she mentioned this to her doctor, he said, “Oh, have you tried AquaTherapy?” She hadn’t and he wrote a referral on the spot for water physical therapy, which proved helpful. Even if you don’t make use of the services, knowing your options gives you other strategies to try if you don’t get the results you are looking for.

Ultimately, dealing with and healing a long-term, chronic illness is a long game, and requires being an educated patient or client. Make use of these questions to help create a pro-active, informed, and multi-pronged approach to getting the best care you can.

What questions have you found most useful to ask your provider?

When you’re ready to have support from a practitioner who listens deeply to every word you say, and can help you figure out how to talk with your doctor(s) about your health conditions, schedule a free Assessement Session with me, to learn more about how I can support you in your process.

It’s Almost Time for Spring Cleansing

by Amanda Malachesky | Mar 5, 2018 | Cleansing, Digestion, Functional Medicine and Coaching, Inflammation, Symptoms

I used to do a cleanse every spring when I was in my 20s. My favorite acupuncturist created it, and called it the Spleen Vacation.

You would choose a list of 20 foods, and only 20 foods, to eat for a week, to give your spleen and liver a break. No animal products, and only whole foods. Like 1-2 grains, 3-6 veggies, 2 fruits, one healthy fat, nuts and seeds. It was hard, and I would eat a lot of rice, steamed greens and avocados, but I always felt better afterwards, more clear, clean, and calm in my brain.

But I would return to my normal (not-so-good) eating habits soon after the conclusion of Spleen Vacation. And I never used the step-by-step reintroduction plan I teach in my Inflammation Free program.

Well, I’ve come a long way, baby!

Why Cleansing?

The purpose of a cleanse is, of course, to clean out your insides, but I’ve come to view it as so much more.

A cleanse is also an opportunity to settle down your underlying issues, so you can gain clarity on what may be contributing to them. Often, our symptoms are made worse by foods we’re eating every single day, but we can’t see that because we keep doing it. The same goes for some of our self-care habits.

Are you wrestling with signs and symptoms like insomnia? Panic attacks? Sudden bouts of diarrhea or gas? How about bloating? Are you feeling generally depressed, irritable, or unmotivated? What about rashes or acne? Do you experience PMS?

Though all these symptoms or conditions may seem unrelated, in my practice, resolving them always begins with removing the top inflammatory foods, and adding anti-inflammatory lifestyle habits. I call this process “clearing the muddy waters” because the inflammatory foods really cloud the picture if you’re trying to understand what your body is doing.

Cleansing Can Help Resolve Symptoms

I love helping my clients focus on permanently eliminating the foods and habits that are mucking things up inside to help them resolve symptoms, and to allow us to see what else is going on in there.

It’s so often something small. A recent client came to me with body aches and pains, as well as challenging moods. They also weren’t sleeping well. They were worried that something was seriously wrong with them, and didn’t know what to do.

In their intake session, we discovered that they were drinking around four cups of coffee every day, and regularly relied on sugary treats in the afternoon when they were feeling tired and mentally worn out.

Though it’s never an easy conversation (some of you might say things like “You can have my coffee…over my dead body”, right?), I suggested at least reducing the coffee slowly. We were also working through an inflammatory food elimination diet.

They already knew gluten didn’t work for them, and suspected dairy didn’t either. But they found that eliminating sugar made a huge difference with the pain they have been dealing with for quite some time. Combined with the reduced coffee, they began sleeping better, as well. So often, experiencing this success inspires more action, and gives us some breathing room to figure out what to do next.

Small changes add up to big results.

And of course, the devil is in the details…they weren’t sure how to go forward long term without sugar, as their body was still craving it strongly. And this is a challenge we all have to face with our health issues.

How do we continue to make the right choices, when the temptations to make the wrong ones are so ever-present, delicious, and easy?

I’ve found that the answer lies inside of our own personal “why”. Why do we want to feel better? What would we do if we were free of that symptom?

To define our “why” provides our motivation. After that, success is a practice of taking action, however small, to keep moving in that direction. Some days, that may entail staring down the cookies and moving on to something else. Other days, it might be skipping the extra coffee. Some days, you’ll fall off the wagon, but you need to remind yourself about your WHY, and take action.

So get out there and get taking action, even small steps, and get cleansing.

If you’re ready to begin improving your symptoms from the inside out, so you can feel better and do more of the things you love, I invite you to learn more about my Inflammation Free program.

How to Avoid Health Whack-A-Mole

by Amanda Malachesky | Dec 18, 2017 | Functional Medicine and Coaching, Functional Nutrition, Symptoms

I’m referring, of course, to the carnival/arcade game where robotic moles pop up from holes all over a game board, and you get points if you can hit the moles before they hide back in their holes again.

It’s kind of hard to hit them, and no matter what you do, more of them keep popping up again until your time is up.

Is there a way to win the Whack-A-Mole game so no more moles pop up?

Nope.

Sometimes, we treat our health and symptoms like the Whack-A-Mole game. Headache? BAM! Ibuprofen. Anxiety? BAM! Alcohol or benzodiazapines, like valium. Depression? BAM! Anti-depressants like SSRI’s. How about hormone problems? BAM! Birth control pills.

It’s reflexive and pervasive. Most of us have been raised to think this way. Symptoms happen, and we do what we can to make them go away right then. If “A”, then “B”.

But what if you want to figure out WHY the headaches, anxiety, depression, or hormone trouble? Wouldn’t it be better to remove the cause for the headaches, especially if they are common and frequent? The anxiety or other symptoms?

Hitting the symptoms with temporary fixes is a lot like the Whack-A-Mole game…you might knock that symptom back into its hole, but it’s just going to explode out of its hole again. A better fix might be to unplug the game. That way, no more moles are ever going to come out!

People can be impatient with what’s required to take this different approach to their health problems. It’s nowhere near as easy as popping a pill, and hoping that the problem won’t re-emerge. And for a while, this approach can seemingly succeed in keeping symptoms at bay.

However, eventually, if the original source of the problem is still there, you’re going to continue to need that pill to keep you on your feet, which can get expensive, both in money AND with side effects. (Have you ever read the side effect warnings on medication labels?)

Root Cause Resolution: Unplug the Whack-A-Mole Game

Resolving your symptoms at the source takes a bit more time, but with the proper guidance is totally possible. Let’s take the headaches as an example.

First things first: when are they happening? How often? When did they first start? What else was happening then? Did you change jobs? Move? Experience another stress? Begin eating a new food? Is it always before your period? A thorough health history and timeline can help illuminate the original cause of the headaches. These questions give us the initial clues to figure out where to try approaching the situation.

Let’s say that you’ve noticed that they always come around when you ovulate and right before your period. You also notice several other symptoms around that time that you also struggle with, such as irritable and dark moods, tender breasts, cramps, and diarrhea. You crave chocolate, but it makes your cramps worse.

Knowing all of these facts provides us with a lot of helpful clues. Now we begin the work of sifting through your day-to-day to identify which foods and behaviors may be contributing, and remove them.

I’m sure you can infer that we’re likely seeing a hormonal challenge with this hypothetical headache case, because the symptom shows up at certain parts of the monthly hormone cycle. And you might be tempted to say, “They have PMS.”

This may be true, but PMS is truly just a label, and doesn’t tell us anything about the specific players that make things better or worse, or how to approach. The first place I want to explore when hormones are at play is blood sugar handling.

What?

Yes. Hormone imbalances often begin with blood sugar handling. So more questions: are you eating protein with your breakfast? Are you eating throughout the day? What does your food intake look like? Are you getting protein, fat, and fiber in with each meal and snack? Does your diet include a lot of high carb foods? Junk foods? Caffeine? And so on…each of these can help me understand whether you may be experiencing blood sugar ups and downs that may be impacting your hormones.

How about dairy products? If they are regularly in the diet, their hormone content can impact hormones as well, especially if they aren’t organic. Are there other inflammatory foods in the diet, such as gluten or sugar? How about missing or deficient nutrients that might help the body function better, like magnesium or vitamin B6? Are there other signs of this deficiency?

Even before we get past “diet”, there are lots of possible supports for someone who presents with “hormonal headaches”.

There are many other pieces, such as exercise, stress, and sleep, which could be involved as well. Cleaning up all these areas often results in symptom resolution, for the headaches and other things that may be there as well. We could choose to take the Motrin and call it good, knowing that we’ll need to try to hit that mole when it shows up again next month…

Or, we could be proactive, and create a playing field where the moles just don’t pop up at all. We essentially REMOVE the moles from the game, so we don’t even need the Motrin, or antidepressants, and curiously, many of the other symptoms that plague us reduce in frequency or go away altogether.

This is functional nutrition, and how we work to remove the root causes, and how we avoid health Whack-A-Mole.

This approach is how we get power over our life back from our health complaints, by understanding how our actions and choices are impacting our symptoms, and making different choices.

Symptoms = Inflammation (Often the Silent Type)

by Amanda Malachesky | Dec 11, 2017 | Digestion, Functional Medicine and Coaching, Inflammation, Symptoms

I know every single one of you out there reading has experienced a symptom at one time or another…a headache, an upset stomach, aches and pains, bad moods, or fatigue. This seems like a wide-ranging list, and it is. But what if I told you that each of them has its roots in inflammation?

It’s becoming widely accepted that most symptoms, illnesses, and diseases have inflammation at their core. Inflammation is an important, natural, and normal part of our immune and injury-repair response, like when you have a fever, or have a twisted ankle.

But what about those situations where the inflammation seems to get turned on, and doesn’t shut off? What about those chronic symptoms that repeat monthly, daily, or weekly, like panic attacks, PMS, migraines, bloating, diarrhea, or joint pain. How do you normally handle them?

Many of us reach for an over-the-counter or prescription medication to handle these bothersome symptoms. Let’s face it: when you have a raging, pounding headache, or a panic attack and you have stuff you need to do, our impulse is to shut that annoying symptom off so we can get on with our day.

But symptoms that return over and over again are signs that something isn’t right in our bodies, and they should be addressed. The OTC and prescription meds can help relieve the immediate symptoms, but this is only a short-term solution. And what about the silent inflammation that you can’t feel in your body, but that is causing internal damage nonetheless? Heart disease is a classic example of this. I want to share a little about how symptoms show us that inflammation is present…

Silent Inflammation

Inflammation is a normal and natural part of our body’s response to injury or invasion. When you twist that ankle, or breathe in a virus or bacteria, immune cells rush to the area to clean up the injured tissue, or kill and remove the invaders, and this causes swelling, redness, heat, and pain. These symptoms are proof that the immune system is at work and doing its job.

A fever is your immune system trying to make your body an inhospitable environment for an invading virus or bacteria.

An allergy is a different kind of inflammatory response, where the immune system has become sensitized and trained to react to an invader, even if it isn’t a dire threat, like a pollen, or a food, like peanuts. In minor cases, this can lead to hayfever or skin rashes, with itchy and watery eyes, sneezing, and nasal congestion, and in severe cases, anaphylaxis.

If you have an allergy, I’m sure you likely know it, and avoid the allergens to the best of your ability, to avoid the symptoms.

But sometimes, we are sensitive to foods or other environmental contaminants, but we aren’t yet aware of them, because we are constantly exposed to them, and the effects are sub-clinical, or below a detectable experience, and this is one source of silent inflammation.

Another major source of silent inflammation that you may not be aware of is frequently elevated blood sugar. In this case, excess sugars are converted to triglycerides, and these sticky triglycerides, along with the LDL cholesterol, adhere to the inside of our arteries.

This artery “spackling” shouldn’t be there, and the arteries become inflamed from the build up, in an attempt to fix the situation. The trouble with this process is that you can’t feel it. It doesn’t cause any specific signs or symptoms until the process has been going on for years.

If you have regularly occurring symptoms, especially of the digestive variety, mood challenges like depression or anxiety, aches and pains, headaches, or fatigue, it’s likely there are sources of inflammation in your diet, lifestyle habits, or living environment that are contributing to your discomfort.

Though there is often an ongoing, and regular exposure to these items, the response is low-grade, and the effects may be sub-clinical, or below the level where you can experience them. But even if you aren’t aware that they are contributing to inflammation, they are slowly creating damage to your cells, organs, and systems.

Eventually, you begin to notice you don’t feel quite so energetic anymore, you have a harder time getting out of bed in the morning. You can’t exercise like you used to, or worse, you start experiencing symptoms that get in your way of living life like you’d like to. You feel down and out, and don’t want to go out with your friends, you have headaches that keep you home from work, or anxiety that makes it difficult to travel, or you hurt all the time, and you can’t play with your kids or your grandkids. These impacts are real, and account for a lot of missed work and missed opportunities and fun.

How to Reduce Hidden Inflammation

The good news is that there is a lot you can do to reduce hidden inflammation! Clearly identifying the sources of this silent inflammation is the key to resolving chronic symptoms, and even disease diagnosis at the root cause level.

The place to begin is always with food. So many of us are suffering from unacknowledged food sensitivities. When you know where to begin, this is an area of our life that we have total control over.

The biggest food players in silent inflammation are gluten, dairy, and sugar. The place to begin is by eliminating them for a minimum of three weeks, and then add them back in, to see if your body can tolerate them. If you find you can’t tolerate a food, now you are armed with some very valuable information about how your symptoms are connected to your food, and you can make appropriate choices, and make the necessary choices to reduce or eliminate your symptoms.

Often, people feel dramatically better when they try this: they lose weight, their moods and sleep improve, their aches and pains decrease significantly, their lab markers improve, and they have more energy. I see this all the time with my clients.

If these three foods don’t make much of a difference, then the other players need to be identified.

Certain foods added to your diet can help reduce inflammation while you work on identifying your unique culprits. Turmeric is a long-recognized mediator of inflammation, and supplementing may help with many types of inflammatory conditions including joint pain, digestive conditions like IBS and IBD, cancer, diabetes, and more. Other anti-inflammatory foods include ginger, greens, berries, healthy fats from wild-caught fish and olive oil, and more.

The guidance of an experienced nutrition coach can help you navigate this process, and identify the specific foods, habits, or environmental irritants that are contributing to your issues. Things like sleep habits, exercise, mold or chemical exposure, stress, and so on can also be contributors.

What are your contributors? Are you aware of any of them? Comment below to share what you find impacts your feeling of well-being.

Despite research and trials, are you still confused about what to eat to avoid your symptoms and feel better? A whole-picture approach is important when using natural methods to address a health problem. I encourage you to download your free copy of Roadmap to Gut Recovery, my free action guide that gives you action steps you can take right now to get started identifying your unique symptom triggers and root causes of your condition.

If you need more individualized help, I invite you to schedule a free, 30-minute Assessment Session with me. I can help you identify where your next best steps should be on your healing journey, and we can explore whether we would be a good fit for working together.

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