Your 5 Components of Health

At Synergee we believe in helping you identify and understand the root cause of your symptoms or disease state. We want to get to know you literally inside and out…no seriously by walking through a complete health history and completing appropriate testing based on your symptoms, potential disease states and of course your goals we can help guide you through a process of addressing the five pillars of health that will help you not only meet but sustain your health goals.

The five pillars of health include nutrition, detoxification, mobility, hormone balancing and managing your stress response and are all key components that drive profound changes in the way you feel and function.

So let’s dig in and talk about why this is so important…. have you ever tried to improve your health through diet and exercise or by taking hormone replacement therapy, only to find your efforts stall, become stagnant or maybe even your symptoms got worse? This is unfortunately a common story that we hear. Simply put, there is so much information out there today it is almost impossible to know what is best for you without careful consideration to your genetics, current nutritional state, your body’s ability to manage your stress response, your body’s ability to manage toxins… without that knowledge making lifestyle changes that give you results and are sustainable can feel like a guessing game.

We strive to help you take the guesswork out of what your body needs in order to get to optimal function. Your body has an amazing capacity to heal and we want to empower you to partner with us and take charge of your health.

So let’s explore specifically your five pillars of health:

N U T R I T I O N :

We implement a “food first” approach to healing, the quality of your food is 80% of the process. That’s right 80%, if you can learn what your body needs in the way of food you will be amazed at how your body will respond. The food you eat has the potential to be the best form of medicine or a slow form of poison. So the decisions you make every day add up to either building you up or tearing you down. If we can keep your food choices that simple the process of making the necessary changes becomes much easier. Food should ultimately be to sustain life, provide energy, and promote the growth and repair of tissue. The Standard American Diet may provide short-term energy, but it also leads to blood sugar imbalance, hormone imbalance, fat production, weight gain, and ultimately poor health. The bottom line is the Standard American Diet is highly inflammatory.

In order to acquire optimal health proper nutrition is fundamental. Regardless of the style of eating, Paleo, Mediterranean, Keto, Histamine Balancing, Low Amylose, low FODMAP, or others we always want to promote whole food-based, quality food. We will be providing you guidance along the way with recommendations for great recipe books and websites that can help you make the necessary changes a reality.

D E T O X I F I C A T I O N :

I know detoxification is a big word and may be a little intimidating but honestly your body is constantly taking substances you are exposed to and through an amazing biological process biotransforming those substances so they can be excreted and do not cause harm to the body. When you hear the word detoxification some people automatically think “bowel cleanse” but that’s not what I’m talking about, the liver is your main organ of detoxification but your kidneys, bowel, sweat glands and lungs also participate in the detoxification process. The problem comes in when our incoming toxic exposure is greater than our body can manage at any given time. Under these circumstances, your body will store these toxins in your body’s tissues and organs. This will lead to symptoms like fatigue, insomnia, headaches, poor hormone balance, irritability, and often poor digestion. So essentially we are an accumulation of everything we have been exposed to our entire life. Factors that contribute to our overall toxic load include our nutrition status, genetic tendencies, and as mentioned our incoming toxic exposure. Everything we eat, breathe, or put on our skin has the ability to contribute to that toxic burden.

If we stick to the basics of clean air, clean food, and clean water we will go a long way to help your body minimize the incoming toxic load and then we will help you develop some lifestyle practices that will support your body’s ability to detoxify.

M O B I L I T Y: M O T I O N A N D E X E R C I S E :

Your body was made to move. In the world of Functional Medicine, if you can preserve vision, memory, and mobility you have done amazing things to keep yourself functional and independent as you age. If I could bottle up all the known, documented research on the benefits of exercise and had it in a pill..everyone interested in their health would want to take it. The truth is, if we are not using our muscles, we are losing our muscles. Developing a way of consistently moving your body will go a long way to helping you feel and function your best. Your plan for mobility needs to be something you will do and preferably something you actually enjoy doing. The process of finding the right thing for you will require an open mind and possibly a shift in your daily priorities but I promise you it will be worth it. Your plan for the type of movement will be dependent on how your body is dealing with stress or your stress response for instance if you are struggling with fatigue and your hormones are not balanced we may suggest a more gentle approach to movement to start out with.  Our goal is to have the movement you choose to support your overall health goal.

H O R M O N E  B A L A N C E :

Your hormones are your body’s chemical messengers, there are over 600 in the body and hormones provide a way of communication within your body. In our modern-day world, your hormones ’ability to balance and stay balanced is challenged. Not only are we subjected to the age-related hormone decline but more problematic is the inflammatory environmental influences of our western way of life. Hormones are responsible for regulating most bodily functions, when we think of hormones we often only think of our sex hormones but hormones are responsible for so much more and work as a symphony within the body. That means if you have one hormonal imbalance your body will attempt to compensate and a cascade of hormonal imbalance can develop. For this reason, we understand the importance of a thoughtful hormonal assessment.  We not only recommend assessing your hormone levels but also your genetics, your levels of inflammation, and your key nutrients that support hormone balance. With this information, we can implement a plan for true, sustainable hormone balance.

S T R E S S  M A N A G E M E N T / N E U R O / E N D O C R I N E :

I will start by saying…your body keeps score. Just like we are an accumulation of all the bacteria, viruses, toxins, and chemicals that we are exposed to over our lifetime we also develop internal patterns of responding to stressors. What starts out as an internal protective response can turn into a pattern that keeps the Neuro/endocrine system from resetting. Your body cannot determine the difference between a physical stressor, chemical stressor, or an emotional stressor and will respond to a perceived stressor in a very predictable way. In order to develop a lifestyle of resilience we must help you understand your stressors develop a plan to resolve as many of those stressors as possible and develop strategies to implement in your lifestyle that can help you mediate past or ongoing life stressors.

By developing a lifestyle that incorporates these key elements you are not only giving your body what it needs to heal but you are setting an example for your friends and family. Lifestyle change has the potential to not only improve your health but the health of those around you. It is said that you become an average of the five people you spend the most time with….be the change that you want to see in others. The gift of health is one that keeps giving and giving!