Inflammation is the #1 Health Problem in America
This is a great article from Experience Life that gets at the heart of what I think America’s main health problems are… a state of bodily inflammation from poor nutrition, lack of exercise and stress.
What is inflammation? It’s essentially your body’s immune response. Think about when you get a cut on your finger: the area around the cut may become red and swell up. That’s a sign of inflammation…basically, your body responding to something that is wrong and attempting to correct it. But what I’m referring to is a more full-body kind of inflammation that can be due to MANY factors: stress, being overweight, having high blood pressure, high blood sugar, etc, which can lead to things like diabetes, heart disease and various auto-immune disorders. The primary medical marker of inflammation is white blood cells. Raised white blood cell levels are linked to a higher risk of developing various illnesses, including coronary heart disease.
The term “functional medicine” seems a bit vague to encapsulate this kind of approach, but in a nutshell it’s about working longer term and more holistically with a doctor. You work together to test nutrient levels and inflammation in the blood/body (such as the a1c test: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/a1c-test/MY00142), and get on a proper health plan: good nutrition, sleep, stress management, regular exercise. Instead of looking at one isolated marker, like cholesterol level (which on its own isn’t a guarantee of heart disease) and just signing up for pharmaceuticals, what should be happening is a full test of all kinds of markers to determine health and what can be fine tuned to improve it.
http://experiencelife.com/article/functional-medicine-a-science-whose-time-has-come/
McKenna Rowe is the Founder of Chakra 5 Mobile Yoga, an experienced team of corporate yoga instructors that provides mobile yoga classes on location and by appointment at businesses, schools and organizations throughout greater Los Angeles. Call us to start your corporate wellness program today: 310-853-3885.