Health Medicine
“Focusing on health with as much precision as disease will make us all feel better” so says the Leader article in the New Scientist Magazine this week in its feature on health. The question of “how healthy are you really?” is covered in this piece, which considers new tests that can support answering this question for us.
How timely it is then that this week James Maskell was also asking the question of whether his Functional Forum should be renamed Health Medicine Forum? To illuminate the origins of the term Health Medicine Maskell had invited Dr Joe Pizzorno to his weekly podcast. Dr Pizzorno is editor in chief of IMCJ, and has decorated and respected associations with institutions such as Bastyr and the IFM, as well as being an educator via his phenomenal Natural Medicine textbook.
Dr Pizzorno wrote an op-ed in January 2023 in the IMCJ entitled Health Medicine. In this piece he suggests that the disease-treatment medicine model is not wrong, just incomplete, and that embracing health medicine is the solution to solving our chronic disease healthcare crisis.
“Health Medicine” puts the patient front and centre “it is about promoting the health of each unique individual rather than the statistical disease models in generic populations. It is fundamentally about nurturing first and intervening second” (1). In addition, treating underlying causes, optimising physiology, prevention, education & self help, natural medicine, reducing toxins, increasing nutrient dense food and prioritising health promotion even at end stage care are cited as key tenets of Health Medicine.
Whilst many professions come under the banner of Health Medicine, we all work in our own ways with the individual to empower them to be aware of their own health needs, then support them to remove barriers to their own health, and that is also the key message of Health Medicine. Pizzorno states that over half of the public is seeing a non-disease treatment-oriented healthcare professions or is self-treating with natural health products. By adopting the banner of Health Medicine we can therefore illuminate a path more formally for our patients.
For many of us who work in the health care arena, especially those working outside of the disease-centered model, Pizzorno’s words and the New Scientist article, are nothing new, these are concepts we are familiar with and work with on a daily basis. But we all feel the sink in the depths of our being when what we do appears to be seen as not as valid or respected by the current medial model. So, we carry on our work as individuals, continuing to do the best job we can for our patients. But I invite you to pause this week and consider the potential swell of a new movement in the phrase Health Medicine… Pizzorno in his article speaks to a time of ‘Spontaneous Co-operation’ when the public and those working in our arena unite under one banner. Perhaps this is the time? So, as you pause this week and perhaps read his op-ed, or the New Scientist article, or James Maskell’s work on the Functional Forum, know that you are valued and valuable, and that you are part of a wider ‘Health Medicine’ community. Perhaps also consider utilising the term health medicine in a blog, or on your website (not as a claim that this is what you do of course, non-medical practitioners are unable to promote the word medicine aligned with the non-medical work they do), so that we can illuminate the term, if it feels right to you. Pizzorno would love feedback from practitioners on the term, he invites comments to the email address noted below!
My take on where we are at with our understanding of health at this time is very much in line with how the New Scientist article describes it; that health is homeostasis: how well can you re-set when things go up or down? When I first learned about Functional Medicine, I thought about the word capacity, that word has never left me though I never hear it used in Functional circles.
I have always used it when considering what the functional capacity of each of my clients might be? What is their capacity to re-set, to undertake a programme I recommend? How do we optimise capacity in order to move a client further forward?
Leo Pruimboom is presenting next week in London (brought to us by ANH), his work on Psychoneuroimmunology is not to be missed. Clinical psychoneuroimmunology (cPNI) is something we could all consider when starting to work with clients; it is an excellent tool and thought process for removing obstacles for clients and supporting them to navigate a re-set in their health. CPNI can help to deliver more capacity to then undertake a more traditional therapeutic programme, if that is still required. When we think about interventions that we make as practitioners cPNI helps to get our clients into a healing mindset, to reclaim their sense of agency. It is the perfect starting point when working with clients, and in some cases it may be the only thing that we need to do.
When we need more, when we need the deeper dive, we can then layer on additional interventions, such as testing, nutraceuticals for more targeted therapeutics, optimising key body systems such as the gut, the metabolome, the immune system and brain health.
Colab Services Ltd was born out of collaboration, it is in our DNA and our name reflects this; collaborating with laboratories to deliver testing and education services to practitioners. We are community driven, and so the sense that we have this week in the office with the timing of James Maskell’s conversation with Dr Pizzorno and Leo Pruimboom’s upcoming masterclass is like stars aligning, to help us to come together as a community, and to help us to consider the deep work that we do with our clients, and that is Health Medicine for us all.
Dr Pizzorno invites comments on his op-ed. You can email him at mail2@drpizzorno.com
(1) Pizzorno J. Health Medicine. Integr Med (Encinitas). 2023 Jan;21(6):8-14. PMID: 36820267; PMCID: PMC9938672.