Let’s start with the definition I received from the first practitioner of functional medicine I’ve met through my monthly zooms on the subject of wide-ranging approaches to health. Dr.Traci Potterf, PhD, a Medical Anthropologist, defines how she and other practitioners of functional medicine consider health and wellness. They avoid what much of traditional medicine does, or the suppression of symptoms. And instead, they root out the underlying causes of one’s problems.
Her history influenced her greatly—as it tends to do. Her father was a psychiatrist and she spent time in his office. When she fell victim to debilitating anxiety herself, it scared her greatly. She didn’t want to be one of those people she’d seen in her father’s office.
So she pulled herself up and out by investigating and mitigating environmental factors like mold in her home which was a serious hidden contributor among other noxious products therein. She searched for psychological contributors. Ultimately she found that sauna, heat, red light therapy, the sun, sleep, meditation, and many forms of energy medicine eradicated her anxiety and she returned to full health.
‘Energy medicine’ she defines as thought, intention, touch, consciousness, and pulsed electromagnetic energy—which the owner of Resonant Light Technology explained so eloquently in a subsequent zoom session. This approach which is also delved into in my novel, The Human Trail, will be further explored in our June zoom. Dr. Potterf has scientific studies that backup each of these energy methods.
She also said what Dr. Billy Buffington, MD, reiterated in another subsequent session. Our lives have moved far away from the natural world we evolved in, and that contributes to more serious illnesses and at younger ages. The fact that the US has lost life expectancy—and as Dr. Potterf said, healthy life-expectancy as well—to all the other advanced nations on the globe since the early 80s—seems to prove her points!
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