Outsourcing Your Potential – Why I chose Integrative Medicine (With a Spiritual Twist)

My health journey as a practitioner started like many of my colleagues in the alternative health world. We, personally or a loved one, had a health concern that wasn’t getting healed through the traditional Western medicine model. I won't go into all the details, but I think it’s worth showing where I (and many others) started, which led me to practice within an integrative model.

This may not be true for you reading this, but for me in my late teens, I assumed doctors knew everything. So, when I showed up at my doctor's office only to be told they couldn’t find anything wrong, it made me feel crazy- can anyone relate? At the time, I had fatigue, weight gain, skin issues, and in general, didn’t feel well. I was offered birth control and anxiety medication- none of which aimed to seek why I was having these symptoms. Interestingly, after being in practice, I have found these two things are commonly prescribed to women to “fix” their symptoms.

I assume many other providers in this field (like me) are a little bit Type A. I finally got past the point of needing another doctor's validation that something was wrong with my body. After all, I’m the one living in it. This was the point where I dove into research and sought wisdom from other sources outside of allopathic medicine. You could say God graced me with a somewhat stubborn personality that doesn’t take things at face value, which, in this case, worked to my advantage.

I, like many of us, thought I needed something external. For a moment, I believed something was wrong with me or “broken” that required treatment or medication to fix. It has become normal to believe that we have a problem (insert yours) or are broken in some way and need an external source because our body isn’t capable- right? We live in a world where the media would have you believing you NEED the next supplement, pharmaceutical, diet, etc., to be whole.

This is where the “whole” health piece comes into play. Although I'm a work in progress, I have reverence for the fact that God is the one who created everything, including our bodies. Is it that His design of our body has changed, resulting in current health trends that show a rise in preventable illnesses? Not at all. His design of our body is the same- perfect and capable of healing. It's hard to appreciate how complex the body is and how many hundreds of thousands of reactions happen daily for you to survive. It's literally fascinating.

Our healing potential lies within our body when we allow it to maintain that balance (homeostasis) that God designed it to have. The thought that we NEED something to make us complete as if his design is flawed, doesn’t make sense. This is where focusing on how our habits affect our biology is crucial. What we eat/drink, what we listen to, and our relationships all affect our biology. So, maybe it isn’t that your thyroid suddenly stopped working, or your immune system isn’t as strong, resulting in frequent colds. Perhaps something in your environment caused a negative shift over time, leading to the symptoms you're expressing now. This refers to a field of study called epigenetics, which focuses on how our environment alters our gene expression.

I'm not in any way saying that surgery, pharmaceuticals, and supplemental interventions don't have a place and are necessary at times. We’ve likely all needed (and were thankful for) one of those interventions at some point in our lives. Also, this doesn’t ignore the fact that genetics have a role. However, there is an overemphasis that our bodies cannot be whole without (insert product).

This is one of the many reasons I, and many other providers, chose an integrative model. The understanding that our body, by His design, is amazing. Living a lifestyle that compliments your biology instead of working against it can result in feeling well and reaching your full potential. Don't give in to the idea that you must outsource the innate healing abilities already within you.

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