Functional Medicine Practitioner and Naturopath in Melbourne
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I can also be contacted via email during the holidays.
Wishing you all a wonderful and a safe holiday season.
Warm regards
Luke Clarke
For Australians, large-scale bushfires, followed by floods were a tragic start to the year. Soon after, news of COVID-19 swept the world, quickly escalating into a global pandemic. Entering unprecedented times, Australia and New Zealand enforced strict lockdown measures that changed life as we knew it. Whilst economies, events and travels plans are still experiencing the after effects, individually, the mental and emotional toll this year has taken also continues to be felt by many.
In the final months of 2020, let’s stop and reflect – how have you felt throughout this year? Understand, that whatever degree to which you felt you were affected by the events of this year, you’ve lived through times of crisis and trauma. Because of this, it’s important to understand what trauma is, and how you can support your body and mind to process and rebuild resilience in response to it.
An event becomes traumatic when it overwhelms a person’s nervous system, stress resilience and coping mechanisms, becoming too much for the mind and emotions to process.
For this reason, living through the enormous uncertainty that COVID-19 created is a collective trauma experienced by most across the planet this year. Here, our nervous systems were left reeling as they tried to make sense of something they’d likely never encountered before.
An event becomes traumatic when it overwhelms a person’s nervous system, stress resilience and coping mechanisms, becoming too much for the mind and emotions to process.
From a biochemical perspective, when the brain encounters trauma, it will activate the ‘fight or flight’ response (the sympathetic nervous system) as a way to try and process the event. This response is totally focused on resourcing the body to fight or flee from the threat, shuttling blood and energy to the heart, limbs and lungs, and taking it away from the brain, digestive and reproductive organs. Therefore, our capacity in fight or flight mode to interpret complex emotions, language, thoughts and concepts is actually diminished.
So if you’ve had any moments this year of feeling stressed, anxious, unmotivated, overwhelmed, confused, scattered or forgetful, know this has all been perfectly normal and expected under the circumstances.
Beyond this, our nervous system may enter another stage, called the ‘freeze’ response, where it stops trying to fight or flee and instead tries to trick or confuse a threat by freezing in place. Emotionally, this can present as feeling detached, numb, exhausted and/or disassociated. So if you have felt any of these, this is also normal, and is the result of your brain looking for a coping mechanism.
If you’ve had any moments this year of feeling stressed, anxious, unmotivated, overwhelmed, confused, scattered or forgetful, know this has all been perfectly normal
Once we perceive that a threat or trauma has passed, the nervous system works to cycle back through these stress responses and return to what’s called our ‘rest and digest’ mode (the parasympathetic nervous system). This is where the brain is alert but relaxed, and is allowing all normal and health-promoting functions within the body to occur.
It’s our aim therefore to help the body return to this baseline, where it can begin to process the trauma effectively, build resilience and better cope moving forward.
To start you off on this process, here are five recommendations to consider:
When processing trauma, it is recommended you seek the support of a Natural Healthcare Practitioner, who can assess your experiences within the context of your entire life’s story and health picture. Playing a supportive role within your wider healthcare team, they can create a prescription using supplement, diet and lifestyle interventions that will assist your nervous system to rebuild resilience. To find your closest Practitioner, click here.
2020 certainly presented us with enormous unseen challenges. To some degree, we all experienced trauma in response to this, and your nervous system would have worked to process and understand this trauma in its own way. Drawing on the supportive tools and Practitioners you require, you can begin to meet and process this trauma, helping your nervous system return to baseline, and head into 2021 feeling empowered and resilient.
A functional medicine practitioner and a naturopath are similar in many ways, but that’s not to say that they are the same. Those seeking treatment for chronic conditions may find relief from practitioners in either field, but their methods do differ somewhat.
A functional medicine practitioner may use naturopathic techniques, and a naturopath may be trained in the methods of functional medicine too, but the two may still use different methods of treatment. Functional medicine builds on the foundation of conventional medicine and it treats patients holistically relying on some naturopathic concepts. Naturopaths rely solely on a variety of natural treatments.
Naturopathy is a practice which is rooted in the belief that the body holds the innate ability to heal itself. A naturopath looks to harness the body’s vital force to enhance and support its ability to heal. The patient’s healing is helped by removing obstacles which may be impeding the body’s ability to heal and balance itself. If the patient’s body is in harmony, it can prevent disease and alleviate chronic conditions. A naturopath will use natural treatments such as nutrition, detoxification, herbal supplements, and homoeopathy to remove the illness.
A functional medicine practitioner and a naturopath are similar in their approach. Both types of healthcare practitioners will begin the process by gathering as much information about the patient as they can. They will take into account their diet, the exercise they do, environmental factors and their genetics. A naturopath is more likely to take this further to gain insight into the emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of the patient’s life.
Functional medicine and naturopathy both look to prevent chronic illness from developing into a disease by taking the individual into account. They both treat the patient, not merely the illness. Conventional medicine may suppress the symptoms while neglecting the factors causing the illness.
Based on an in-depth consultation, a functional medicine practitioner will order lab tests to get a clearer picture of the patient’s health status and how their lifestyle and genetics may have affected their overall health. A naturopath may not be able to order such tests or form a diagnosis.
The two practices also differ in their treatment solutions. A naturopath will only utilise natural treatments, but a functional medicine practitioner will use every tool available to them through a multidisciplinary approach. This approach relies on the knowledge and skills of a physician, dietician, health coach, and a behavioural therapist. The functional medicine practitioner will then design an entire programme for the patient to follow in order to recover from their condition. A functional medicine practitioner may also rely on naturopathic treatments, should they consider them appropriate.
Philosophically, functional medicine views the body as a cohesive system, rather than a collection of organs independent of each other. The function or dysfunction of these organs affect each other and may manifest in illness. A naturopath primarily sees the human as self-healing and looks to harness the healing power of nature to help the body in the healing process.
Luke Clarke is unique in that he is both a functional medicine practitioner and a naturopath. This allows him to draw on his skills and experience in both fields to give his patients the right treatment to meet their needs, rather than utilising only one modality.
When you first meet with a functional medicine practitioner, you can expect to have a long and in-depth appointment. But what does a functional practitioner do during that session? They take as much time as necessary to gain a thorough understanding of your overall health. They build a broad picture of who you are, your lifestyle, and what your medical needs are in order to treat your maladies and afflictions before they turn into disease.
After conducting an extensive interview–which will lay the groundwork for your treatment–the functional medicine practitioner will conduct a physical exam, a series of lab tests, and begin to identify areas of your health which can be improved or concerns that need to be treated.
This method is used to identify any imbalances and stem any symptoms in order to prevent disease rather than treat them after they have been detected.
When working with a functional medical practitioner you are likely to also work with a multidisciplinary team that may include a Chiropractor, Osteopath, Health Coach and or a Counsellor.
The trick to really getting a full picture of a patient’s history is to ask a series of targeted questions, which could also reveal the cause of their symptoms. This assessment, however, is not limited to their medical history.
A functional medicine practitioner will ask patients about:
Following the analysis, a functional practitione will conduct lab tests and blood tests where necessary. The results will inform the practitioner as to what methods can be used to treat the patient’s ailments in order to improve the health of the patient. The treatment is based on the individual needs of the patient; it is not a one-size-fits-all approach.
Functional medical practitioners use a combination of treatment plans which include:
Treatment is an ongoing process. The patient’s health will continue to be monitored to ensure that their physiological processes are improving, and the holistic wellbeing process is working to the benefit of the patient.
Functional medicine is widely seen as a new approach to medicine which incorporates a broader view of the individual’s health in order to treat their symptoms before they develop into more serious conditions and diseases. If you are ready to try this approach to health management, call us today to schedule your first appointment.
Research reported on September 25, 2020 in PLoS One uncovered a lower risk of adverse clinical outcomes among hospitalized COVID-19 patients whose vitamin D levels were sufficient.
The study analyzed data from 235 men and women hospitalized with COVID-19. Blood samples collected upon admission were analyzed for 25-hydroxyvitamin D, C-reactive protein (CRP) and other factors.
Among those whose vitamin D levels were sufficient at 30 nanograms per milliliter or more, risks of illness complications, including loss of consciousness, low oxygen levels or death were significantly lower than the risks experienced by those whose levels were insufficient. Patients over 40 years of age who had sufficient blood levels of vitamin D had less than half the risk of death from COVID-19 compared to those who had insufficient or deficient levels. White blood cells known as lymphocytes were higher and CRP levels were lower in the vitamin D sufficient group.
“This study provides direct evidence that vitamin D sufficiency can reduce the complications, including the cytokine storm (release of too many proteins into the blood too quickly) and ultimately death from COVID-19,” remarked corresponding author Michael F. Holick, PhD, MD, who is a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics and molecular medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.
“Because vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is so widespread in children and adults in the United States and worldwide, especially in the winter months, it is prudent for everyone to take a vitamin D supplement to reduce risk of being infected and having complications from COVID-19.”