Office Hours: Common Functional Medicine Questions

Happy New Year!
I am answering common questions from my patients during this episode. 
During this episode, we discuss:

• Food Sensitivities
• Bone Health and Screening for Osteoporosis
• Finding the right practitioner for your needs- Resources are ifm.org and A4m
• What Causes Swelling
• Fatty Liver Disease

Discover the transformative power of tuning into your body's unique language with me, Dr. Charlyce, on the Art of Healing podcast. This episode will enact a journey through the nuanced world of functional medicine and its applications in primary care, dissecting the subtle yet significant messages our bodies send us daily. From the foods that might be causing you hidden harm to the long-term signs and immediate reactions that could indicate deeper health issues, I’ll guide you through personal anecdotes and professional insights. Expect to be equipped with the knowledge to identify what changes in hair, skin, and energy levels could tell you about your overall health.

 Don't miss out on the opportunity to join a community eager to embrace a holistic health approach. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter, and you could find yourself with a healthcare partner in me, who's committed to a more integrative, personalized journey to well-being. Let's transcend traditional primary care limitations together and unlock the secrets to a healthier you.
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:53

Welcome back to the Art of Healing podcast. This is Dr Charlize, and thank you so much for joining me. So for this season I wanted to open the doors for discussion and for communication. So every month I'm inviting you listeners to send me questions that you may have concerning functional medicine, internal medicine, reiki or any integrative healing. So what we'll be doing is I'll be taking questions and I'll answer them directly for you during the podcast. So in the show notes I'll put ways that you can communicate with me. I had figured because I haven't given some questions and it just I'm a little slow and uptake, but it occurred to me this is a great place to answer because if one person has this question or I have it, probably a lot of us do so. During this episode we'll be addressing specific questions I've had from my Reiki clients, from my functional medicine patients, from my primary care patients. So we'll just get started with that and then make sure you see your show notes, ways that we can keep in touch, ways to get my weekly newsletter and then, if you do have questions that you would like addressed or topic you like to discuss, ways that you can communicate with me.

Speaker 1: 2:13

One of the common questions I get are what are the signs of a food intolerance or a food allergy? You know, I think that's one of the best questions to ask. I've even had to ask myself if certain foods I was eating were starting to cause allergy or intolerance, and I've actually been surprised and even with doing my own testing, to discover that I was developing some moderate to severe food allergies and I hadn't really even noticed. So for you, if there are certain foods in your diet and you're wondering if they're starting to impact you, what you might want to look out for and here's what I would recommend Long-term changes that you might want to notice, particularly hair changes, skin changes, joint changes and overall energy. So, if you're starting to notice that any one of those are going in the wrong direction over three months, six months or a year, and as you're looking at what's in your pantry, what you might be eating at lunch every day, are there certain staples that are in your diet, something that you might be eating every day it may be time to question if that food is leading to that change. Is it something that's causing inflammation that shows up on your skin, or is it something that's causing you to be inflamed on the inside, where you're not absorbing your nutrients. Shorter-term reactions that may be more severe is, you know, something like a rash that erupts after you eat a certain food? Or even noticing just generalized sensitivity or redness of your skin after you eat a certain food?

Speaker 1: 3:53

And for some people, certain foods they notice cause immediate joint pain and swelling Not so much an allergy, but I mean it's an intolerance. If you are someone that eats smoked meats or certain seafoods, or steak and beer, and you did get a swollen and painful joint right afterward Although that could be gout, in a way, that's a food intolerance. Also, if you eat a food and you're noticing that you get tired immediately, within an hour or two of eating that food, or If you notice feeling tired six to seven hours after eating that food, that may be a sign you're not tolerating it. Well, that's just as the food's transiting into your small intestines. Possibly your small intestines are not able to process it and it's causing inflammation. And and then, lastly, a lot of people don't think about this, but if it's something you eat and your mood crashes, so you eat it, you feel tired or depressed or anxious. That maybe your body's way of telling you that what you're eating isn't working well for you. So it might actually be causing like changes in certain hormones, driving your insulin up too much or affecting your cortisol or something else. So if you're eating a food and basically after you eat it you should feel good and Energized and ready to go about whatever it is you need to do, then it's time to question if that food's working for you, if you're intolerant to it or even if you're allergic to it.

Speaker 1: 5:27

The next topic is partially a question and then partially something that I've been wanting to address, and this platform, the podcast, is one of the good places to address it. So, as I was working through transitioning from Traditional primary care working for the you know large hospital organization to a worker for myself as a functional medicine doctor, I had many patients ask me where they could find a primary care doctor that practices functional medicine. So this one is a little bit tough to answer. In the way that I explained to my patients was that you should approach primary care with a certain set of expectations and then, if it is functional medicine or integrative medicine that you're seeking, you should probably be prepared to look for other resources Self-education or be prepared to look for another or an additional provider.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Reason being is that primary care in the United States, which is what I'm the most familiar to, has certain task-oriented goals, care measures and guidelines that have to be addressed with patients, and these typically have to be done in a certain period of time. Typically, the visits are structured to be conducted in a certain period of time, maybe 15 minutes or 20 minutes to 30 minutes or 40 minutes, depending on your location, the physician that you're seeing. Because of this, that what can be addressed during this visit is limited. Also, the visit is being paid for primarily by your insurance, more than likely unless you're paying cash and insurance, while it will pay for Many aspects of your care, there are restrictions and guidelines to that, meaning that Some of the things that might be addressed in a functional medicine practice or integrative medicine practice may not be addressed, may be reimbursed by insurance.

Speaker 1: 7:34

So the advice that I give my patients is, if you're looking for a primary care that has a holistic approach, you might want to check certain databases, like I, a film work a 4m I believe has a database of Course asking family and friends, or a Google search. But you should also understand that if you're booking with a primary care provider who is strictly internal medicine or family practice or Pediatrics or obstetric scion ecology. Although they may be open to discussing a holistic approach, this may be isn't their background. They may not have the knowledge or the interest. It may be that in their practice and in their location that they must focus on More disease-based issues and that just may not be accessible with them. So it might be best to address your primary care needs with them and then, if you're wanting a preventative holistic approach, either self-education, doing some of your own reading, or finding a practitioner on those databases that does that specifically. So, being that we're coming up on winter, a lot of patients are very savvy. They make sure to get their bone density checks as we get into the winter months, before it gets icy, because we all worry about falling. Honestly, I had a fall in my 20s and actually suffered a minor fracture in my leg, so that's a topic I take really seriously because it was a little devastating and I was just 25.

Speaker 1: 9:15

But back to the question. Many of my patients are asking me about osteoporosis, osteopenia, what their risks are for these disorders, so I thought I would address that a little bit during the episode. Do you know when it's time to check to see if you have osteoporosis. So that's called a bone density test or a DEXA scan, which is what's typically done in the United States, and it's time to start checking your bone health. If you're a female in your over the age of 50 and you're no longer having periods or you're through menopause, you might also need your bone health check. If you suffer from chronic inflammation, diseases such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or other related issues, you might need your bone density checked if you're a man and if you're being treated for diseases such as cancer or severe hormone imbalances such as adrenal disease, or if you're taking opioids chronically.

Speaker 1: 10:20

So when I'm working with my patients who have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, one of the first things I ask them to do is to get a good dental exam and make sure they get their teeth cleaned and make sure that they don't have any unknown dental issues like cavities or issues with their gums or their jaw. The reason that I ask them to do this and this is my personal recommendation is that if the bone loss osteoporosis needs to be treated, sometimes we have to use medications that can interfere with dental health. I've done this so commonly now I'm almost asking patients to get a dental exam around the same time they get a bone density test in case they need treatment for osteoporosis. If you've been diagnosed with bone loss whether it's osteoporosis, severe or moderate, or early bone loss, which is called osteopenia the first things that you should do after you've spoken to your doctor about treatment is make sure that you have a good anti-inflammatory diet so you don't want to take in things that would make you more inflamed, like excessive sugars or fats that are bad for you or overly processed foods. So might be time to check out the fridge and make sure you've got plenty of foods that support your bone health, like mushrooms and spinach, plio leafy greens. The other thing you should do is start working in some resistance training. Resistance training can take the form of weights. You can also do resistance training with walking. You can put weights on your ankle. That add some resistance. Even some forms of power yoga can be resistance training. But you want to start doing resistance training at least two to three times per week while you're figuring out the next steps with your bone loss. Working with a functional medicine physician such as myself is a great place to get down to the root cause of what would be causing your bone loss. Check out my site DrCharliescom to find out if working with me is right for you. It's particularly if you have bone loss and you're looking to augment or treat your bone loss with a functional medicine approach.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Swelling that is one of the most common complaints that I see, and I see it so much I sometimes forget to talk to people about why you're swelling. So having extra fluid swelling or DEMA in your legs and feet isn't normal. Now, the causes of it is a fairly long list. So sometimes we get swelling in our legs and feet because we're not getting enough water, or we're getting too much water, or we have some kind of imbalance in our electrolytes. Sometimes we're getting swelling in our legs and feet because we're eating too much of the wrong stuff, including too much sodium, especially when the sodium is mixed up in processed foods. Sometimes, if we're getting swelling in our legs and feet and it's not going away, that could be a sign of having something wrong with your hormones, like a thyroid abnormality. Having something wrong with your heart, where your heart's not beating correctly or not beating strong enough and it's causing fluid to accumulate. Or having something wrong with your kidneys, where they can't filter very well, or having a problem with your liver, where your liver is not working and it's causing a buildup of toxins. So it's a long list of what could be causing swelling in your legs and feet. So of course, it's best to discuss it with your doctor.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Have you ever heard of fatty liver disease? Recently a friend asked me what it is. Fatty liver disease is a disorder in which normal liver tissue is replaced with fat. What are signs of fatty liver disease? The first thing you might hear is that you've had blood work done and your liver tests come back abnormal. There are three tests we look at when we test the liver, called an AST, an ALT and a bilirubin. So one or two or all of those may be elevated. If you're developing fatty liver disease, the other thing that might show up is you're sent for an ultrasound or a CT of your abdomen and there the radiologist may read something like enlarged liver, hepatic steatosis, something similar to that. So what do you do if you've been diagnosed with fatty liver disease? If you've been diagnosed with fatty liver disease or suspect you have fatty liver disease, the first thing you need to find out is if you have elevated blood sugars, if you have elevated insulin, if your cholesterol is elevated. So if you haven't done those already, you should definitely ask your doctor to test those numbers to see where they are.

Speaker 1: 15:12

So these were some of the topics I got asked about the most in the past maybe one to two months and so hopefully you enjoyed this and found this format useful.

Speaker 1: 15:24

I'm definitely going to invite you to reach out to me if you do have a specific question you'd want answered in terms of functional medicine or internal medicine. So topics you could ask me about are high blood pressure, having palpitations, having chronic inflammation, having autoimmune disease. So I will put in the show notes if you are interested in having your question answered, and next time we do an office hours we'll cover that topic. As always, in the show notes there'll be the details and links on how to reach out to me, and if you want a copy of this episode emailed to you, you'll want to sign up for my weekly newsletter, and that link you'll find in the show notes as well. And if you are interested in working with me and you qualify, being that you live in an area that I can service, you'll also see the links to my practice, drcharliescom. Have a wonderful week and I will see you next week.