Daily Tip #1 - Dismissing symptoms/Write them down
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Welcome to Functional Medicine with Dr. Barr. This podcast is to help you explore the underlying root causes of your chronic symptoms and health challenges. Reset your health and reclaim your life.
VARSHA: Hi everybody. Today, I'm so excited. It's day number one of the Daily Tip and Habit Challenge. So this will be a little daily tip and educational piece, and then a habit challenge at the end that you can incorporate for that day. Let's get to it. So let me paint you a picture.
You drag yourself outta bed after eight hours of sleep, feeling like you haven't had any sleep at all. Your stomach bloats after breakfast, like you swallowed a balloon, and by 3:00 PM your brain is feeling like it's wrapped in cotton and you're downing your third cup of coffee just to function.
Here's the thing, you probably convince yourself that this is just normal. I'm getting [00:01:00] older. I'm just stressed. Everyone feels this way right? But what if I told you that feeling that way isn't normal at all? What if these symptoms that you've been normalizing are actually your body's desperate attempt to get your attention that something has gone awry
that's much deeper. Here's what I discovered after practicing functional medicine for many years, we've become expert at just normalizing some symptoms that either we've gone to the doctor and they couldn't find anything wrong. So we just thought, okay, we just have to live with it, and it's just part of getting older,
~we blame it on needing more coffee, the bloating after meals, we just say, okay. I just ate the wrong thing. And joint pain or brain fog, thinking that our memory's just getting worse as we're getting older or feeling more achy. It's just my age. I.~
But in functional medicine, we know that every symptom is information, every ache, every energy dip, every digestive issue is your body trying to communicate with you. The problem is we've been taught to silence these messages with either medications or just dealing with it. If it doesn't fit in some sort of diagnosis category instead of.
listening to our bodies and what our bodies are trying to tell us by having these [00:02:00] symptoms, and here's what makes it even more challenging, we often don't even realize that some of our symptoms are interconnected and they play off of each other on how bad we feel, or there's a deeper underlying root issue that is causing all of those symptoms.
~I wanna say that part again. And here's what makes it even more challenging.~
For example, I've had patients where they come in with migraines, constipation. And pain, and they're on a medication that they take for their migraines. An anti-inflammatory like meloxicam for their joint pain, and then they take stool softeners or MiraLax for their constipation.
But they come to me just wanting a functional medicine workup and we do a gut health test and find out that their gut is all off and we fix that. Their constipation is better. Their moods are better because your gut also plays a role in your moods and also in your pain and pain's better because they don't have as much inflammation.
~So this is where conventional medicine tends to be different. So this is where, this is why. ~This is why functional medicine evaluation is so comprehensive. We look at everything because that seemingly [00:03:00] minor symptom you've been dismissing for years. It might be key to understanding what's really going on with your health and maybe related to other symptoms that you're having.
~You know, most of us are walking around feeling terrible and we don't even realize it. We're just so used to it. We just normalize it and we're so accustomed to the daily symptoms. You know that 3:00 PM energy crash, you know that brain fog or joint pain, we just think it's just part of getting older or bloating after every meal.~
~Oh, it must have been something I'm eating. I guess I just have a sensitive stomach.~
~Brain fog. Oh, I'm just getting older brain fog and joint pain. Oh, I'm just getting older because my memory's getting bad and my, I have arthritis.~
~We ask about things from head to toe and. Well even have you fill out a questionnaire that even grades how bad your symptoms are or how often you have them. We also ask about your sleep and in functional medicine, this is why in functional medicine we start with a comprehensive SY symptom symptom assessment.~
~We ask about everything from, we also ask about.~
~And we don't only ask about your main complaint, for today.~
~Oh, I think I,~
~so ~here's your challenge for today, and this is gonna be your wake up call. To ~a ~how you actually feel. This is just to have awareness so that you can change things. ' because You can't change things you do not know, right?
So grab a piece of paper and just down. And go from head to tone. Write down every symptom that's been bothering you. And don't forget, Take a look at yourself physically too, not just what you feel inside, because all of those are clues. like your nails might have vertical ridges in them. That is a clue to some nutritional deficiencies.
Your tongue may look white, your skin might feel dry. You might have bumps on your arms. And then once you put that down, just rate it on a scale of one through five on how bad it bothers you with one being it doesn't bother you at all, and five being that it bothers you a lot, almost every day.
I will also leave a link in the description [00:04:00] so that you can download a questionnaire that might make this easier.
So this exercise isn't to make you feel bad or depressed, that you have all these symptoms, but it's to help create awareness because once you become conscious of what you've been unconsciously accepting, and you can now start. ~Being more aware of how you're feeling and when you're aware of how you're feeling, you can actually ~to make changes and understand like how these changes are making you feel better or not.
Now, put today's date on the paper and keep it somewhere safe. Or if you do it on the computer, just store it in a file ~and once a month. F and maybe ~one month from now, ~one month from now, just ~do the same thing and then go back and compare and see if there's any improvement, especially as you do these daily habit challenges.
And then you can do it after six months and then a year. ~Because sometimes we don't even realize how much things have changed because we have a new level of normalness as symptoms may improve because sometimes we don't notice how the small changes, how they're helping us.~
When you check it again, it'll be your proof to see if your changes are making you feel better or not. And if they're not, then you know ~you have to make, ~you might have to do things differently.
And if they are, then you know you're on the right track.
~So your body is just constantly sending you messages through symptoms, blah, blah, blah. I don't need to do that. Why is it on there again? All right. All right. ~So I hope you enjoyed this video and I'm excited to share the habit challenges ~and, uh, ~I'm even more excited to hear about the [00:05:00] results~ will be coming up.~
~So everything is just kind of a work in progress. I don't know why I have to go on and on. Okay, so I hope you like this video and I hope it's helpful. I'm very excited to see how I don't need to say that. So what am I gonna say? So, okay. If you like this video, please subscribe. ~If you like this video, please follow and share.
It might be fun to have other people do these habit challenges with you, ~and so make it, you know, ~because connection is so important in functional medicine and health '~ cause connection is so important. So sharing a similar goal is, uh, so hopeful. Maybe you could, uh. Then ~if you like to watch videos on YouTube, this will also be on my YouTube channel, Functional Medicine with Dr.
Var. ~So you can also watch it on there as well. ~Thanks for listening or watching and have a fantastic day.
