Want to RESTORE Your Wellness?
Look Beyond Signals to Uncover Root Causes
A holistic approach to nutrient-dense wellness considers the whole human body and its inter-connected systems from the digestive system and the nervous system to the endocrine system and beyond.
Here's why: Imbalances in one body system can disrupt homeostasis (i.e., the body's healthy resting state) and cause widespread responses in other body systems.
For example, elevated psychological stress may keep the nervous system chronically busy which may decrease movement within the digestive system, as openings of the stomach are contracted.
Or consider how the function of the digestive system relates to the immune system. The digestive system sterilizes the food that we consume with stomach acid. Stomach acid serves as a protective agent that kills disease-causing bacteria before they have an opportunity to take hold in the GI-tract. In this way, the digestive system protects us from fungal and parasitical infections. However, if the production of stomach acid is impaired then this provides an opportunity for bacteria to invade the GI-tract and actually cause an immune response.
From a functional perspective, this further illustrates the importance of thinking holistically rather than focusing on isolated signals when correcting imbalances in the body. In the above example of a fungal infection, restorative conditions may be put in place with an anti-fungal diet that starves out the candida by creating an inhospitable environment. But the root cause of GI-imbalances from other possible factors, such as hypochlorhydria (low levels of stomach acid secretion) would also need to be considered to prevent future fungal infections. In other words, both the signal (candida) that points to an imbalance and the root cause (hypochloridia) would need to be addressed.