The Triad of Health
Do you wonder how a functional doc/naturopathic doc would approach your health?
First a little background I’m a naturopathic doctor and what that means is that I look for the root cause of the dis-ease in my patients body’s. For example – if a patients comes in with pain in their body - I don’t believe that they have an ibuprofen deficiency, I believe that it’s our body’s way of getting our attention to say something is out of balance. So I use all the tools in my toolbox to figure out what the root cause might be. As simple as that.
So whether it’s a seemingly more complex illness like an autoimmune illness or something more straight forward like daily headaches, we have seen that there is always a root cause associated with the issue. Now the root causes can be very different form one person to another.
So lets say five different women walk into my office and they all have the same type of gut imbalance like bloating, constipation, acid reflux – they most likely will still have five different root causes and therefore have five different treatment protocols.
Of course we will be making improvements in food and lifestyle that will still help all the women, however, here could be additional root causes. (hint: there almost always are.) And we will chat more about what those other root causes could be later on. In holistic and functional medicine we treat everyone as an individual because everyone is different and has different biochemistry.
Make sense? However, no matter what the person has going on – we start with the triad of health. This is a tool that you can use to assess your health as well!
The three components of the triad are chemical, emotional and structural. Let’s dive more into what each of these means in more detail.
01.
The first arm is “Chemical” and this makes up what shouldn’t be in the body that could be causing dysfunction.
We know that toxins + heavy metals are not things that our body does well with. We are detox machines, but when we get overloaded with too many toxins it will start to cause imbalances in the body. How about chronic infections? This is a common finding among our patients. Chronic infections make up fungus, parasites, viruses and bacteria that haven’t been properly addresses by our immune. “Chronic” meaning likely they have been there for sometime. The chemical arm of the triad also contains acute infections but those we tend to feel right away and are very aware they are there. Chronic infections can be sneakier. Some examples may be a long standing parasite, lymes disease, chronic mold exposure etc. Beyond infections we are also dealing with a constant barrage of toxins and metals. Food sensitivities, allergies and inflammatory foods also fall into this category of things that “shouldn’t” be in the body so it can heal.
When we address the chemical arm of the triad we are also looking at what the body might need to heal like nutrients, vitamins, homeopathics, food + herbs. If a chronic infection is found to be causing an imbalance we will likely address it using herbs, homeopathics etc to aid our immune system. We also use food as medicine and there may be certain nutritional advice that will help to bring this arm of the triad into balance. There are thousands of remedies that we can use to address any imbalance.
02.
The second part of the triad is structural.
This makes up the physical body so things like exercise, chiropractic, massage and anything physical that needs to be done to the body to provide the most alignment to optimal health. The structure of our body is so important. Are you moving enough? Is there a physical issue that is preventing you from healing. All of this is addresses in this part of the triad.
03.
The third is probably the most taboo but I believe holds a lot of weight and that’s emotions or stress.
Health experts agree that stress causes some 90% of illnesses. Crazy huh? As complex as it may sound is pretty straight forward. Any stress that hasn’t been resolved, lives in the body and creates dis-ease.
Lets use an easy example – someone says something mean to you and you immediately feel it in your stomach or your heart, you feel your blood pressure rise, your face get red and you might throw out a cuss word or two (in your head;) Those are all example of stress affecting the body. We know from scans AND from our research that stress actually creates proteins and those proteins store in various organs and systems in the body.
Now depending on the relationship you have with said person and what they said, you may process those proteins pretty easily. But you might not. They might have really “pushed your buttons” and in this case they will trigger a deeper issue and that bigger stress lives in the body until we deal with it.
We have all experienced large stresses or “trauma” - an angry boss, un unreasonable mother in law, an ex… you get it. We all have trauma and trauma is relative, but it affects the body and we see this time and time again.
There you have it! Those are the three components of the triad and each one influences the other as our body operates as a whole. The structural affects the chemical and the emotional affects the structural etc.
I like to say most times if two out of the three get in optimal balance, that third one usually comes around.
Now its time to take assessment of your health! Which part of the triad are you supporting and which one needs more help?
