Zoom-in: What does Dr. Joseph Pizzorno have to teach us
about risk profiles in disease progression?
In his career, Dr. Joseph Pizzorno has made it an emphasis
of his to bridge the divide between various ways of health-maintenance. Whether
that be in Western-based medicines in the typical symptom-treatment-based
paradigm that so many hospitals ascribe to, or other alternative styles like
homeopathy, environmentalism/naturopathic, or functional medicines. One such
way he attempts to bridge the divide in these lenses of understanding is by
finding common ground where all groups can cooperate. An overlapping dimension
of these paradigms of understanding emerges when you consider environmental
conditions, which directly impact our health and well-being and impact our
homeostatic mechanisms of physiology.
In a recent book, Pizzorno zooms in on one aspect of
environment—exposure to toxins. His book, The Toxin Solution1,
points out key findings related to toxins in the environment and the overlap of
disease pathophysiologies with exposure to said toxins:
“94% of Americans are exposed to
enough polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to double their lifetime risk of
asthma.
60% of US women carry loads of
PCB187 sufficient to double their risk of breast cancer.
33% of Americans have lead levels
high enough to double the risk of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
25% [of people in the US] are
exposed to enough aluminum to double Alzheimer’s risk2.”
It makes sense even at a fundamental level, no matter if
your health paradigm is preventative, interventionist, or otherwise—if you are
exposed to hazardous compounds your health will be impacted. And modern society
is rife with materials that impact our health, often times because they are
cheap and not-yet-fully-understood in terms of mechanisms of action during
engagement with a person. We use so many things that are meant to improve
profit margins, but simultaneously depress personal health. Pizzorno has a
solution for this—functional medicine. Which is what his organization, IFM,
helps propagate. They describe it as “medicine [that] determines how and why
illness occurs and restores health by addressing the root causes of disease for
each individual. The functional medicine model is an individualized,
patient-centered, science-based approach that empowers patients and
practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease and
promote optimal wellness3.”
More information about Pizzorno and functional medicine can
be found here: https://www.ifm.org/
Written by Jeremiah Ockunzzi, courtesy of Dr. Bart
Rademaker, MD.
1)
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-toxin-solution-joseph-pizzorno?variant=32122805846050
2)
https://holisticprimarycare.net/videos/joe-pizzorno-the-toxin-solution/
