WHY MACROBIOTICS ENCOMPASSES BOTH FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE AND LIFESTYLE MEDICINE?

The body is one integrated system, Functional Medicine makes you work with the whole body as a system; as does the Macrobiotic approach and Ayurveda. For example, someone comes in with rheumatoid arthritis; and exhibits symptoms pain. Conventional medicine will suppress the disease with some painkillers, while Macrobiotics, Ayurveda or Functional medicine addresses why is their inflammation there in the first place; what are the driver of the rheumatoid arthritis? While conventional will focus on symptoms, and not removing it from the root cause; Macrobiotics, Ayurveda and Functional Medicine with strive to do so.

How does that affect how I work? In most cases, it is your diet that also causes the disease or ailment. I will also use diet to reverse the disease or ailment. For e.g., you have an autoimmune disease and candida; so I will first remove all the foods that trigger candida from your diet; then treat you with foods that will work for you. Ayurveda treats much the same way, however, the use of diet in Ayurveda today is not that widely practiced catering to each ailment. The discipline I work with – Macrobiotics does work with diet and food alone.

The tools that are used are different, there is no medication; but the 1 consistent pillar is your diet and if extremely severe plant-based extracts (Ayurvedic if needed). The cause of the disease is established first, and then the right foods are suggested and used keeping the energetics of the foods as a framework to help reverse the ailment. A person could be suffering with multiple symptoms, from different organ dysfunction like someone may have type 2 diabetes and heart disease at the same time. Ayurveda, Macrobiotics and a Functional medicine approach allows one to use foods to treat all these dysfunctions together, more cohesively.

I also use what they term today as ‘Lifestyle Medicine’ which is nutrition, physical activity, minimize social and environmental exposures, manage stress to prevent, reverse and treat the disease, its progression. I do this by looking at the root cause. I sometimes also use homeopathy (Dr. Divya Chhabra) by recommending you to her (if in Mumbai) or finds other practitioners to work with from Ayurvedic and Homeopathic streams of medicine and I use bodywork health practitioners (from streams of Craniosacral therapy, acupuncture, acupressure).

See you at my space soon!