Lessons from the Integrative Healthcare Symposium 2012: Day 1

I have been in NYC at the ihsymposium.com (Integrative Healthcare Symposium)  for the second year in a row! And again I  am in awe at the overwhelming knowledge of functional medicine that is present  in on place! Some of the most famous leaders, trail blazers, scientist, practitioners are leading sessions that are packed with not only evidence based medicine but clinical experience that one can only gain from years or practice!

Dr. Jeffery Bland started off the conference today with a comment that  went something like this: "What happens when patients get the correct care (traditional treatments and pharmaceuticals) but don't improve?  Time after time after time after time....that's when they show up at our office to try functional (integrative, holistic, natural) medicine and oftentimes begin to improve their quality of life.  And I can vouch from my short 3 years of experience, that patients don't show up at our office who feel well! We are generally the last resort for many chronically ill patients!

The resounding theme at this conference is heal the gut, decrease the inflammation in your body! When  you begin to decrease inflammation in the gut you begin to decrease inflammation in the entire body.
On average MD's get 12-16 hours of nutrition education in medical school. This is one of reasons that I feel traditional practitioners are not encouraging patients to clean up their diet and decrease inflammation.  As an NP I can vouch we didn't get much education on nutrition as well. It is our job to stop out of the box and begin to help our patients heal from within.  In defense of practitioners that don't  discuss nutrition with patients, they don't know what to say!  Fair enough, but I believe that patients are searching for practitioners that have stepped out of the box on their own and have "unlearned" all that was learned in school about chronic disease!

Stay tuned to start learning ways to decrease inflammation in the body!
Watch this video to learn some great evidence based medicine on the toxic effects of sugar!

I'll give you a hint now.  If you are ready to start decreasing pain in your body then cut out the following foods from Dr. Hal Blatman MD and his http://www.blatmanpainclinic.com/ clinic!
1. White flour
2. White Sugar
3.White/red potato (1 medium potato = 1/2 cup sugar)
4. Fruit juice
5. Artificial sweeteners
6. Hydrogenated oils

Cut the above foods out and begin the road to a pain free life!  More to come on ways to decrease inflammation and healing your body!

~Happy Healing,

Dani
www.csfmed.net