Many people define health as the absence of disease.
What I realize is that everyone has a different definition of health. Many people define health as the absence of disease. Or even the absence of symptoms. They may have other more subtle symptoms such as not sleeping well, or bowel movements that are not ideal, or less than ideal energy throughout the day, or they get angry or irritated easily, or they have irregular menses, or they have chronic headaches or migraines. These are some signs that the body is out of balance.
I want to introduce you to my definition of health and it involves what I call the Health Continuum. At one end you have Disease Processes/Pathology, at the other end there is Optimal health and the area in the middle is Clinical Symptoms/Functional Imbalances. Many people attribute their dysfunctional health issues to the aging process, such as aches and pains, lower energy, poor sleep. The dysfunction is typically occurring due to an accumulation of toxins over time. Overtime we accumulate different toxic loads from the foods that we eat, immune challenges, heavy metals, environmental toxins, structural imbalances and emotional stressors. When the toxic load to more than the body can handle then we start to see symptoms.
Dysfunction over time leads to disease. As Naturopathic Doctors, we try to help patient’s move from disease or dysfunction towards optimal health.
Optimal health is when the body functions the way it was designed to function. Some of the the signs the body is functioning at optimal capacity is good, deep, restful sleep, that we have good energy throughout the day, we have ideal, regular bowel movements, balanced microbiome with great biodiversity, ideal menses with 5-7 days of flow with no symptoms.
We want to conduct functional tests to see where your system falls on the health continuum.
