Chronic health problems are increasing.

More than half of people aged over 65 in the UK have more than one chronic health condition, and that’s increasing by the day.

Clearly, something needs to be done...

What’s going wrong?

I would describe the traditional approach to chronic health problems as “sick care” rather than “healthcare”…

For accidents / traumas, etc the conventional approach is typically fantastic.  If I break my leg, I know I will be in great hands at the hospital.

But for chronic health problems, it’s a different story (for long term health).

Here, people are going to the doctor sick, and the doctor is looking for a quick way to resolve that problem (be it through drugs or surgery in 99% of the cases).  

But that is NOT healthcare.  

It is NOT building someone’s health.  

It is, instead, masking (or trying to mask) their sickness, but not addressing WHY they have these issues in the first place.

Patients look to doctors as a person of authority.  Someone they can completely trust.

Yet all too often we hear people being told that things such as “diet or supplements won’t make a difference” to their health.  

I’m sure even a doctor can’t TRULY believe that.

I should add that I am not tarnishing all doctors/physicians with the same brush. Many are extremely open minded and forward thinking but unfortunately do not appear to be in the majority when it comes to natural health.  

Medication

Medication is very often necessary for someone’s symptoms.

But it’s not the ONLY thing that’s needed for long term health.

The meds likely saved my wife’s life when she was at her most ill with her Ulcerative Colitis.   

But after years and years on strong medication it was ruining her life and no attempts were being made to understand how to help her feel good long term.  

There could also be doubts raised around whether a lot of the commonly used medication is actually even effective…

I’ll put a disclaimer that none of this is medical advice, but the research around statins, for example, appears to show they are only beneficial in very few cases (normally an elderly male who has already had a heart attack) yet they seem to be given out these days like sweets.

It’s actually even thought that statins benefit just 1 in 50 of the people who take them!  

Surely anyone can appreciate that providing diet and lifestyle advise instead would be much more appropriate for the majority of people at risk of a heart attack than pumping them full of drugs?!

So what can be done?

Functional medicine is an area I have become very interested in and is very different to a conventional medicine approach.

Whereas a conventional doctor will use drugs/medication and surgery to deal with problems/disease, a functional approach is more about building health and addressing the root cause.

It appreciates that if someone is experiencing symptoms, then something is causing that, and whilst medication may be needed, we should still work on underlying issues.

That might be gut bacteria problems, nutrient deficiencies, inflammation, stress, infections, and more.

A change is needed.  

The world is getting sicker and sicker.  

At the Autoimmune Institute, we hope we can play a small part in helping you to feel better.

Its why we exist.

We have our range of ultra-high quality effective supplements - which you can view here https://autoimmuneinstitute.com/pages/store

And then we also offer our Advanced Health Investigations that utilise testing to look deeper inside the body and understand some potential causes of your issues.  There’s more on those here https://autoimmuneinstitute.com/pages/stool-test

I hope that helps.