Is Your Body on Fire?

By Dr. Beth Blakely

The fire I’m referring to cannot be smothered with the popular maneuver (stop, drop and roll) or extinguished with a raging river of ice cold water. The fire I’m referring to is the silent but deadly fire that’s burns inside of us. Millions of American’s suffer from systemic and chronic inflammation, a condition that’s wreaking havoc on our overall health and well being.

According to neurologist Dr. Perl Mutter M.D., extensive medical research has proven that our brain health is dependent on our digestive health and the nervous system and the digestive system are intimately linked. So, people can have inflammation and other issues with their digestive system for years and have no idea because they often don’t feel it. Meanwhile, their brains are deteriorating. They’re getting Alzheimer’s, M.S., Parkinson’s, anxiety and depression. And despite all this is amazing medical research over the last 20 years, it’s unfortunately a slow trickle down process before it becomes incorporated into the medical field. It typically takes 10 to 20 years before they get on the bandwagon with what their own research says.

For these reasons, it’s very rare to find an M.D. that practices functional medicine, which is a method that thoroughly addresses overall health. I do think they’re starting to come around because more of them are recommending probiotics, but there’s so much more that can be done to prevent what we think of as age related brain deterioration. The pharmaceutical industry is now injecting anti-inflammatory products into the brains of Alzheimer patients and they’re seeing improvements!

I think what we’re going to find out is that people taking medications are destroying their digestive systems. Think about it, you swallow a pill, where does it go? What people don’t understand is there’s only one layer of cells between your small intestine and your blood stream. So, if there’s something that slips past your digestive system and into your blood stream, it poisons you. I think what we’re going to find out is that medication destroys our digestive systems. But who knows how long will it take? Another 20 years? We don’t have that kind of time.

So, we in the medical field have become acutely aware that we have raging fires burning in our internal systems, so what can we do to get rid of it? I provide functional medicine, which also incorporates nutritional support where it’s needed. I’m not a big fan of guessing what’s wrong with a patient, which is why I do my best to find out the first time I meet someone what they need by asking them to fill out a very thorough questionnaire before our initial consultation. I’ve worked with a lot of neutraceutical companies that make different formulas for calming down the digestive inflammation and I think I’ve nailed it down to some of the very best products that are available to make sure my patients get exactly what they need.