by Amanda Malachesky | Jan 4, 2017 | Functional Medicine and Coaching, Functional Nutrition
When you decide you’re going to change something about your life, do you dive in and make drastic shifts all at once? Throw out half your pantry, or drive yourself to exercise obsessively, thinking that this approach will finally, once and for all, create the change you want to see?
While some of us are adept at altering our routines at the drop of a hat and maintaining those changes in the long term, most of us end up reverting to our previous habits within a few weeks. It’s easy to get started, because there is a rush of brain reward with something new and exciting, but when that wears off, we are left wondering what it’s for, and the old, comfortable habits start looking pretty inviting.
This is the scenario if you are going it alone. But when you add an observer, whether its someone you hire, a support group, or your best friend, and they are in on the project, your likelihood of success goes up dramatically. In coaching, we call this person an “accountability coach”, which is really just a fancy term for someone who holds you accountable to what you said you would do.
Furthermore, the changes you make are more likely to stick if you create just a few, actionable steps at a time. Think one to three new changes at a time. To create new, sustainable habits, we need time to try something new, adapt to the newness, and kind of “fake-it-till-we-make-it” until it becomes the new normal.
For example, if your goal is to eat healthier, you could just adopt a dietary theory that you think works. You could throw out all your sugar, chips, and soda, and go forward. But this is a very broad goal, and chances are, you won’t make it very far.
It is far more valuable to first get clear about WHAT you hope to accomplish with the change, and begin your process by imagining specifically how your life would be better if things were different. Once you’re clear on that, the necessary action steps become clear. You begin with a concrete action step like “Each time I want a soda, I will first drink a glass of water, and consider what else my body might be needing,” along with “I will eat sweet vegetables and foods like sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, winter squash, and whole grains regularly this week to crowd out sugar.” You begin creating a new habit without drastic measures. You create an enjoyable alternative, and observe. You encourage yourself to notice what happens. Your increase in sweet vegetables and grains might reduce your need for sugar, without a lot of fanfare and drama.
When you take on changes incrementally, you allow yourself to have a single-pointed focus, and really dedicate yourself to those one or two things that you think will make a difference. Trying to change too many things at once can be overwhelming, and lead to a feeling of hopelessness. Multi-tasking isn’t always better. When you approach making changes in this way, and you introduce something new and different every two weeks, as I have my clients do, within a period of months, you have developed many new habits over time. You might not notice how much has changed, until you look back and consider what things looked like in the beginning!
Through the twelve sessions of a six month program, my clients may have committed to a maximum of 36 goals through their program. That’s a lot of individual changes! Had I told them at the beginning that they would have given up sugar, lost pounds, resolved their sleep hygiene, created a weekly exercise routine, created stress-management strategies, increased the diversity of the vegetables and whole grains in their diets, and explored 10 new foods, they might not believe it! But this is really the secret: to make a big change, we start by taking on one thing at time, and doing it fully and well before we move on to the next thing.
Let me know below how you have manifested something big by taking small steps along the way.
by Amanda Malachesky | Dec 12, 2016 | Functional Medicine and Coaching, Functional Nutrition, Symptoms
Symptoms aren’t permanent, but they ARE a sign that something isn’t right.
A year ago, I was living in a world of continuous and constant symptoms: belly pain, hormonal fluctuations that left me in severe pain, unable to sleep through the night, hungry all the time, with migraine headaches at certain times, recurring diarrhea, frequent anxiety, and severe fatigue. In this state, it wasn’t hard to see and understand that there was something wrong with me that warranted investigation.
I sought out care, and was given some diagnoses, and care suggestions. These included surgery, medications (I refused these, because they weren’t going to address my underlying conditions, but would likely make them worse), psychotherapy, and a few supplements.
What’s interesting to me about this situation is that the symptoms I was experiencing expanded slowly over time. I was aware that things weren’t right, but between my lack of health insurance, lack of trust that doctors would be able help me troubleshoot my whole body system in a holistic way, and profound lack of personal time, since I was a mother of young children, I did what many people do when faced with symptoms: I continued to put up with them, and managed to carry on week to week to week, in spite of them.
If I had paid more attention earlier, I may have spared myself some pretty difficult times, saved myself a hell of a lot of money, and been able to save my uterus.
But if there’s one take home message I’ve learned from my intensive studies this last year, it’s that symptoms are windows into what isn’t working correctly in the body. It’s not normal to have headaches every day at 4 PM, or to regularly be unable to sleep well, or to be constipated every day, or to get regular colds and flus, or to be tired all the time. These symptoms are giving your body vital information that something isn’t right, that something deserves attention and inquiry.
But what do you do to learn what they have to say? First, it’s about beginning to pay attention to the variables we do have control over: our food, our movement routines, our sleep habits, and how we manage stress. Do we always get sleepy after eating a particular food? Do we tend to get constipated when we sit too much all day, or eat something at lunch? If we stay up too late, does it contribute to our migraine headaches? If we watch a movie before bed, does in interfere with our sleep quality? Answering these questions for yourself can give you a lot of power back over your symptoms. If you can evaluate what is causing your problem, you can change the situation, and relieve your difficult symptoms.
If this isn’t enough, it can be helpful to have assistance from a professional who can look for patterns in the symptoms, or evaluate what might be going on in there using lab tests, a health history, or tracking tools. Sometimes, we have to play detective to get to the bottom of things, but with some applied thinking, we can uncover the hidden causes of suffering, and see a path to relief.
Don’t let your un-managed symptoms go, they are messages about imbalance that are best listened to.
by Amanda Malachesky | Dec 12, 2016 | Functional Medicine and Coaching, Functional Nutrition
I’ll be honest with you. Even though I deeply believe in the functional health care model, until last year, I didn’t even know what it was called. You probably haven’t heard of it either. But make no mistake, functional health care is poised to unravel the chronic disease epidemic facing America right now. So what is it?
Functional medicine is a wholistic approach to health that seeks the root causes of what ails you. Instead of trying to collate a person’s symptoms into a pre-defined pigeonhole diagnosis, functional practitioners look at a client’s entire health history and presentation to try to understand the WHY, and work to restore full function of tissues, organs, and systems, upstream of symptoms.
Reason Number 1: You Believe in the Effectiveness of Wholistic, Lifestyle Solutions
We all know that chronic disease is on the rise, with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer affecting a significant portion of Americans. It is now estimated that almost half of Americans will have a chronic disease by the year 2025. These patients account for 76% of doctors visits annually! But what if there was another way? These diseases all have a common root: inflammation and the wrong kind of diet and living.
Functional practitioners rely heavily on a foundation of coaching people to make lifestyle adjustments and create new habits that are proven to restore health and weaken the hold that chronic disease has in our bodies. Working on sleep and exercise habits, stress reduction, and eating the right foods for our unique metabolism are all key to successfully winning against ill health, no matter what your diagnosis. In fact, no amount of medication can perform the same function as targeted lifestyle changes.
The reason to work with a health coach or other practitioner is that making these changes can be difficult to do successfully. It takes time to set up new routines that support your health, and a functional practitioner or health coach can help you do this, seamlessly, over time while you are addressing the underlying causes of your issues.
Reason number 2: Personalized Solutions
Each of us is unique, though you likely knew that! Bioindividuality is a very important concept when it comes to diet. How many of you have had a friend swear by their new diet, only to find that when you try it, it doesn’t work for you at all?
But even more important is the idea that a diagnosis is nothing more than a constellation of symptoms or processes, but doesn’t tell you anything about the why. It is oft repeated among functional practitioners that if you look at ten different people with diabetes, the cause of diabetes in all ten cases can be different. That’s right, my diabetes is likely different than yours.
Furthermore, the medications prescribed by doctors may suppress symptoms, but they don’t do anything to heal the underlying problem leading to out-of-control blood sugar and insulin resistance. For some, they might be eating the wrong foods for their metabolism. For others, they could have an unnoticed gut infection, and for yet another, they could be under excessive stress and its downstream effects.
In the conventional model of health care, with diabetes you are facing a lifetime of medication, which may or may not control the symptoms, while the underlying mechanism of disease continues. When the underlying causes are ignored, they continue to destabilize your health over time! Doesn’t sound appealing, does it? Wouldn’t you like to know how to solve the puzzle at its source?
Reason number 3: You appreciate being listened to.
This reason may not resonate if you are healthy and haven’t had the need to approach a medical doctor recently. But if you are an unlucky sufferer of a chronic or “mystery” illnesses, one with a lot of strange and seemingly unrelated symptoms, or you have multiple medical issues, you still only have 7-15 minutes with your doctor per visit. How much can you possibly convey in those short minutes? What if you realize you forgot to ask about something after you leave their office? How long will it be until you can get another appointment? Did that doctor really listen to you?
Functional practitioners work very closely with their clients, from the first health history consultation and lab test interpretation, to the hourly, regular coaching sessions that follow. They are often available by email or other means inbetween your visits, and will troubleshoot problems with their recommendations. They are always trying to understand how your system is underperforming, and supporting you toward better health. If you like having the luxury of time in a session, functional health coaches are going to be a good fit for you.
To learn more about working with Functional Nutrition, please fill out my short inquiry form, and then schedule a freeStrategy Session, and we can begin the process of solving your health mysteries together.
by Amanda Malachesky | Nov 19, 2016 | Alzheimers, Brain Health, Functional Medicine and Coaching
Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive disorders are currently thought to be incurable. And this is a big problem, because Alzheimer’s is expected to triple in the US in the next 50 years. Cognitive decline affects 50% of people over the age of 85.
All these statistics, however, don’t even touch the level of heartbreak and grief that affects the families of a loved one with Alzheimer’s, let alone the frustrating and terrifying descent into forgetfulness and loss of self that the person with the disease experiences. This is personal for me, as one of my grandmothers died of Alzheimer’s when I was around 12. I remember hoping then that a cure would be found, but 30 years later, conventional medicine still has very little to offer.
Here’ the rub:
Alzheimer’s begins 30 years before there are symptoms, and is associated with our epidemic chronic diseases: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, depression, and sleep apnea.
What this means is that prevention, as always, is the best medicine. Taking care of your brain should begin in the prime of your life, before you are walking in a room and forgetting why you went in there.
How do you care for your brain and prevent the descent into darkness? The same way we prevent other chronic diseases: consume a healthy, low sugar, junk-food-free diet; exercise regularly; get about 8 hours of sleep per night; maintain healthy relationships with people we love; connect with our inner purpose; and manage our thinking patterns to maintain positive thoughts.
The even better news is that even if you have begun the downward slide toward forgetting your loved ones names or worse, recent research from Dr. Daniel Amen of the Amen Clinics shows that brain damage from our bad habits is reversible, if we are willing to make changes. Dr. Amen has scanned over 60,000 brains, and has shown that targeted interventions can reverse the holes that appear in the brain as a result of injury or lifestyle habits.
In different research, Dr. Dale Breseden has been able to reverse cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients by using an integrative therapeutic approach. Resolving insulin resistance, optimizing hormone and metabolic balance, losing weight, resolving any previously unknown GI infections, using targeted nutrients to support brain function and immune function, exercise and stress reduction, and more are all part of this wholistic, functional approach.
It is my fervent prayer that more people can be made aware of the power they have to support their brain health through their lifestyle habits and choices, and that we can prevent and unravel the Alzheimer’s epidemic.
