After my formal medical training, I started my dream job in a rural clinic, excited and prepared for what would come through the door. I liked stitching wounds and had just spent several years training in a hospital setting. I expected that level of severity. In fact, it was rare to see a patient with severe wounds or illness.  

Most people made appointments to get their prescriptions refilled or to have a physical. I was ready for this and in fact enjoyed getting to know people this way. I fell into a routine. However, over time, I realized that many of the patients coming in for medicine and checkups simply didn’t feel good. I had nothing to offer these people. I simply had no tools for chronic illness. Many of my patients had lingering problems that were not associated with a diagnosis, symptoms such as fatigue, depression, congestion, indigestion, headaches, pain. It did not seem to me that drugs were the best answer for these problems, nor did I feel I was serving my patients well by sending them to specialists. 

Everyday I saw at least one patient who took a handful of medications, each one to treat a different symptom. These drugs offered little relief and came with their own side effects and financial burdens. Many patients reported to me that the specialists seemed to lose interest after a barrage of tests and procedures, providing only a vague diagnosis and a prescription for more medicines. Little was done to help my patients understand how to become and stay healthy.  

I knew health care could be better than this. Feeling bad is not the natural state for humans, yet so many of my patients had not felt good in years. What were we doing wrong?

This all happened several years before the internet really took off. Thanks to a pharmacist in my small town, I learned that others were thinking about this problem in the same way that I was. In fact they were light years ahead. My frustrations had led me to a small group of brilliant doctors and researchers who had developed a new way to approach health and chronic illness, one that persists 25 years later. This approach, called Functional Medicine, merges a deep understanding of systems biology with the desire to find and address the root causes of ill health. After my Functional Medicine training, I felt confident that I could help anyone improve their health, often through simple lifestyle changes.  

My belief in the Functional Medicine approach has held. Everyone who works on being healthier feels healthier. However, not everyone thrived, even when they “did everything right”. Responding to the questions and information that these patients brought me, I broadened my understanding of the main causes of ‘unwellness’. Though initially skeptical that Lyme and other tick borne infections explained chronic illness, I found that treating an undiagnosed or under-treated case often led to significant and sustained recovery. Most Functional Medicine Practitioners have now come to see tick borne infections as a major contributor to chronic illness. But, even with this new knowledge in my arsenal, I still could not guide 100% of my patients to wellness. What else was I missing? 

One answer came during an annual Functional Medicine Conference, when I heard a lecture by Dr. Richie Shoemaker about mold as a major contributor to chronic illness. Slowly I came to agree with him that mold toxins from water damaged indoor buildings can and often do cause tremendous illness. We must consider mold in people who have chronic or mysterious illness. Looking for mold exposure in my patients has led to tremendous success in my practice, some of my patients feeling as though they have ‘gotten their life back’.

Understanding how the body works is an ongoing process.  Scientific research increases our understanding at a dizzying speed. We will likely never understand the billions of reactions that occur in the body each second. We do not even have good ways to measure how the outside environment – foods, toxins, and infections – affects each of  those reactions. Nor can we fathom how each person’s unique genetics interact with their environment to influence health. In the world of medicine, we are and always will be operating in a world of uncertainty.  

The only certainty is that we must strive to better see and understand the human body as a miraculously complex series of interacting systems, and that we need to adapt our assumptions when things do not work as expected. In my practice I try to work with as many of these complex systems as possible, appreciating the importance of genetics and environment, diet and emotional stress, toxins and infections that cause chronic illness. Swatting back individual symptoms is not a long term fix. Health comes only from restoring balance to the complex orchestral interactions that make us alive and vital.