When you look around at the world today, people are suffering. And they don't know where to turn! If you've ever heard me before, you know I tell people all the time, "Find a good functional medicine doctor." That's a doctor who is trained to investigate and dig deep into root causes of problems. 
If you're not dealing with the root cause of why you don't feel well, then you're probably spinning your wheels treating symptoms. The analogy I use is, if your car's check engine light comes on, do you think it would fix the problem to put a piece of tape over the light so you don't have to look at it?
No.
You know that's going to be kind of useless, right? It's actually dangerous, because if you just ignore the symptom, which is the engine light, the real problem continues to exist and eventually, it might destroy your car.
Well, the same thing happens with our bodies. When we ignore root causes, and all we do is mask symptoms with medications, or even supplements. Then, the real issue continues to fester, and it will create more damage to the body over time. That's why people wind up on more and more medications as they age. They're not ever really getting healthy. They're not ever really dealing with the root cause.
Here's my suggestion to you: find a functional medicine doctor. You don't even need to be in the same town as your functional medicine doctor. There are lots of us across the country that have what we would call a virtual practice, where we are consulting with people from other states and countries. It's not necessary that you be knee to knee.
This old paradigm that you had to be face to face with a doctor...with today's technology, that's not necessary anymore.
If you're wondering, "What is a functional medicine doctor?"...you're not alone! Plenty of people don't really know what we do. This article will help you, but I would also suggest that you look around The Institute for Functional Medicine website. That's loaded with a lot of good information to give you a starting point.
If you can't go that route, or you decide not to go that route, then you have to be your own doctor. You have to take responsibility for your health. No doctor, no medical doctor, especially if they're not trained in health. Understand, most of them are trained to manage disease, and when it comes to emergency first-aid care, man, we have the best doctors and the best nurses in the world. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about degenerative-type diseases, which are what most of us ultimately will suffer and die from.
In that situation, they don't really have answers. They're trained to just manage numbers on a piece of paper normally, or they're trained to cover up or change your symptoms.
If you want to get to the root cause, you've got to start understanding where that lies. If you go back and look at my videos, it's the cells of your body. That's what's been damaged. That's your foundation. I always say this: there's never been a healthy person who is riddled with sick, weak, damaged cells, and there's never been a person who was sick, weak, and damaged, who has nothing but healthy cells in their body. Any disease, any symptom, can be traced back to the cell level. That's where the dysfunction lies. That's where those symptoms will manifest.
So here's the deal: you want to get yourself on a whole food diet, but a whole food diet is not just good enough. If you're eating whole foods but you're still dabbling in bad foods, like too many bad fats, too many sugars, or putting too many toxins in your body, then you may get no benefit from eating good foods.
I would tell those of you that are really sick that you have to be really strict for a period of time. Stop throwing gasoline on the fire!
We talked about the cells being damaged, and being inflamed, right? In Latin, inflammation means fire. Think of your cells as being on fire. If every day you're putting little bits of gasoline with sugar, and bad fats, and the things that we know are not healthy for us. You're stoking the fire.
If your cell membranes can't heal, if you can't start raising energy levels in your body, for those of you that are dog-tired, then you're not going to be able to get yourself better. You won't allow that to happen if you keep those cells inflamed. You must follow a whole food diet.
I like the paleo diet, although it's not exactly what we recommend in my clinic. But, if you're autoimmune, you might want to go with Autoimmune Paleo diet. It's more strict, but do it for 30, 60, or 90 days. It'll focus more on getting rid of triggers (even some healthy foods for some people) that tend to drive in somebody who’s already inflamed. So, either paleo or Autoimmune Paleo is what I would recommend. Then, look into intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting is incredible! Take all of your healthy food, and condense it into a six-hour period every day. Do that for a month, see where it takes you. Spend 18 hours where you drink nothing but healthy, clean water. The down-regulatory effect of that, the hormone re-sensitizing effect of that, the ability to start burning more fat -- those things are all enhanced. Fixing the cells is enhanced whenever you give your body long periods without food.
I know it's counterintuitive, because so many of us are trained to think eat, eat, eat. But think of when your dog gets sick, or when your cat gets sick, what do they do? They won't eat. My cat was sick a while back, and she wouldn't eat. Day after day after day, she wasn’t eating. All she was doing was drinking water. That's how God made them.
But you know what? Our bodies are made to fast, too. Start off with intermittent fasting, combine it with a whole food diet, get rid of all the bad foods, be as strict as you possibly can, and I will bet you in a 30-day period you'll start to see improvements in your health. Are you going to be perfectly healthy in 30 days? Be realistic. Something that's been in your body for 10, 20, 30 years or more, it's not going to go away in 30 days. You have to understand that old cells have to ultimately die, and they're replaced by new cells, right? But, it's the things you do today that will determine the health of your cells tomorrow.
Get busy with that. Take no prisoners. Strict Autoimmune Paleo or a regular paleo-type of diet. Get rid of the bad stuff, and put in some intermittent fasting. Be your own doctor. Do some research. Get online. The information is out there if you just look!
