A couple weeks ago my company (you may know I have an essential oil business) made an announcement that literally blew me away. Want to know what it was?
Well, I’ll tell you!
They announced they are investing millions of dollars to open cutting-edge medical clinics all over the country. They’re partnering with healthcare managers, marketing officers and medical officers, and bringing in Integrative Medical doctors who practice functional medicine. This is HUGE, peeps.
What is Integrative Medicine?
About 50 years ago research began to show a correlation between environment and dis-ease. A healing-oriented practice called Integrative Medicine was becoming increasingly more credible. I have to be honest, I wasn’t really a believer. My dad was a medical doctor and that’s what I learned; the traditional, western approach. Everything else seemed so foo foo.
What I have SINCE learned is that Integrative Medicine (IM) takes the whole person, including their lifestyle and environment, into account. The fact that an ESSENTIAL OIL company or all things, is involved in opening clinics linking Western Medicine with Integrative Medicine and Functional Medicine is one reason I am so excited, but it goes deeper. This issue is also super personal to me, which is WHY I’m a believer now.
As a small child, I was diagnosed with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and it started a chain reaction of illness that didn’t stop until I was 40-years-old. Basically, I had a stomach ache my entire life. I didn’t know what caused it and it wouldn’t go away.
As I said, my dad was a doctor and what kid doesn’t hang on every word their dad says? We believed Western Medicine had all the answers. Never questioned it, even though I wasn’t getting well.
The problem with that was, like most of society at the time, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We drank way too much milk (I later found out I was completely lactose intolerant) and used household cleaning and personal care products that today head the list of causes of dis-ease. Most of the western world didn’t know wellness was in our own hands.
Fast forward, I ended up in the hospital – for weeks – several times during my first 40 years on IV antibiotics thereby weakening my immune system and irritating my gut even more. It probably had been irritated from the toxic products and foods my body could not digest.
It eventually got so bad that my liver, pancreas and other organs started shutting down. I had “autoimmune disease-like” symptoms. It’s called massive inflammation and it can be irreparable if we don’t start taking a look at the body-mind system as a whole.
So here I am and I’m well again. And why? Because I finally took matters into my own hands and began to figure out how all our systems are linked. AND I also became a believer.
Food and supplementation and natural ingredients with no additives, stimulants, fake ingredients or toxins DO matter. The fact that we are paying more attention to other modalities is a very big deal.
Can you imagine what the exploration of Integrative Medical clinics will mean for all of us – and especially for the next generation? I am excited to watch it all unfold.
Stay tuned!