What is BEMC’s approach to chronic illness?
Like everything at Bio Energy, our approach to chronic illness involves looking for and treating the source of that illness. Whether a person is dealing with heart disease, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, digestive disorders, diabetes, autoimmune issues, or a host of other chronic illness, this approach is very useful. Covering up symptoms with medications tends to create further problems and never addresses the underlying illness.
What are the specific parts to this approach?
Chronic illness is going to involve issues in one or more of these areas: hormone/thyroid imbalance, chronic hidden (stealth) infection, immune/gut dysfunction, sleep dysfunction, nutritional imbalance, toxicity, or lack of exercise. Our job is to identify which of those issues are contributing to the chronic illness and determine the best way to treat them.
What are stealth infections and how do they contribute to chronic illness?
These are infections that are not readily obvious. Stealth pathogens (hidden agents that cause infection) may be found in areas that are difficult to see—such as H.pylori in the stomach or yeast in the sinuses--or they may be reactivations of infectious agents that we have carried for a long time such as Epstein-Barr Virus (the Mono virus) or Borrelia (the bacteria that causes Lyme disease). Identifying and treating these stealth pathogens can make a huge difference in health outcomes.
What do you mean by immune/gut dysfunction?
Our immune system is controlled by the state of our digestive tract. Around 80% of all immune function is centered here. Multiple agents conspire to disrupt the normal function of our gut—medications, stress, reactive foods, nutrient deficiencies, stealth pathogens, and toxins to name a few. This results in an immune system that over-reacts to the world resulting in allergies, autoimmune disorders, asthma, eczema, and other disorders of chronic immune dysfunction.
How do you test for toxicity?
There are multiple environmental toxins that interfere with health/cause disease. We are most concerned over a person’s total body load of heavy metals and common environmental toxins. Many of these toxins can be tested for using a urine sample. Total metal load is more complicated and frequently requires challenging a person with a chelator (a medication that is designed to remove metals from the body) and measure what comes out. Testing specifically for mercury is even more challenging and usually requires simultaneous measurement of hair, blood, and urine levels.
Once you determine the issues that are present, how do you treat them?
Treatment almost always will start with diet tailored to a patient’s issues along with a gut restoration program. Detox programs are usually started once the diet and gut are in order. Usually simultaneous with this, hormone issues are addressed as well. Frequently the combination of these approaches will result in improvement in the other areas of concern.
Do you ever use medications to treat chronic illness?
Medications are never off the table when it comes to treating any illness. Addressing underlying issues usually will result in better outcomes, but sometimes medications are indicated. They are usually going to be used when other approaches have failed.
