Am I sick but I don’t know it?

My patient called me the other day asking me about her risk of contracting COVID-19.  While I don’t have an algorithm for establishing any real risk percentage per se, I can discuss the body’s stress state and the impact of this virus potentially. You see, this patient had quit smoking just months prior to our first appointment.  While we can celebrate his quitting as a huge victory for him, we must also acknowledge the permanent irreversible damage done to his lungs leaving him at an elevated risk for illness and disease. The risks and injury of smoking have been well documented. Therefore, as a smoker, clearly, one is well aware of the compromised condition and function of their lungs.

So when we refer to chronic conditions, these are disease states that effect us day in and day out, but by their nature are known conditions (as in the ex -smoker above ) which have been reported, diagnosed, treated and perhaps prescribed medication or surgery.

There are numerous conditions that are not aggressively tested for nor identified in mainstream or conventional care.  These conditions of which I refer to are the underlying conditions. An underlying condition is essentially the burden the body has to bear on a daily basis unbeknownst to the patient. These have potential to become silent killers.

These are underlying conditions which do exist in the patient, however these have not been tested, diagnosed, nor treated.  This is a frightening prospect to say the least. Not knowing you have a disease state wrecking havoc on your system is a potential time bomb. This can lead to additional disease states creating an exponential risk of death. The take-away here, is we all need to know and now any disease states within us. Charting along basic biomarkers like total cholesterol and TSH are not only not insightful but not preventive.

This is where functional medicine can be a major player.  By definition, functional medicine performs “extraordinary” tests to identify any potential rooting of disease.

Most functional medicine physicians would say that the majority of patients do have one or more underlying, unknown and thereby untreated conditions. According to the CDC, six in ten adults have a chronic condition, four in ten have two or more. Life expectancy at birth has flattened out over the past decade. Research shows a rise in death rates among young and middle-aged adults.

The U.S. public is remarkably unhealthy compared to people in similarly affluent nations — a phenomenon known as the U.S. health disadvantage. One example: A 2015 CDC study found that 30 million Americans have diabetes. – Washington Post, March 10, 2020

Waste no time and make your health a priority now.  Let’s schedule an initial visit to get you on board; if I have treated you but not run tests this is your next step. I can order at home tests and phlebotomy/blood draw to get answers in days.