#62: Lack of Symptoms Doesn’t Mean You’re Healthy

#62: Lack of Symptoms Doesn’t Mean You’re Healthy

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Welcome to the Be Fab Be You Made Simple Podcast. I am your host Maria Horstmann. I am glad that you are here. I have an awesome show for you today.

Let me ask you this…if you have been to a doctor before, why did you go? What are the chances you went because you had some kind of symptom? There are symptomatic people who choose to NOT seek doctors or help of any kind. Then, there are the non-symptomatic ones. This group is very unlikely to check in with a doctor. What for, right? No symptoms, no problems. In today’s episode, I am going to discuss why lack of symptoms doesn’t mean a person is healthy through the eyes of what FDN-Ps refer to as the Wellness Meter

I added an image of the Wellness Meter to the transcript and to the video version of this episode. If you don’t have access to the image now, imagine a half circle. Right in the middle, you have “no symptoms”. At the end of the right side, you have death or no function. At the end of the left side, you have 100% function. From no symptoms to death, a there is poor energy and fatigue, pain, sickness, and poor immunity, and diagnosis of chronic and inflammatory diseases before one reaches state the body cannot handle it anymore. From 100% function to no symptoms, a person will experience cell protection, strong immune function, and high energy. Although I have not met anyone with 100% function, that’s me included, the goal is get our bodies to run at 100%.

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT IN ACCORDION

Wellness Meter

Symptoms versus No-Symptoms

First, if you have symptoms, which direction you are heading to?  How do you rate your energy and how often do you get sick? Or maybe you have been diagnosed with a disease and taking meds to treat symptoms. What natural therapies are you practicing to help you heal and give your cells what they need to do their jobs?

Second, the no symptom state is actually a dangerous state. Here is where most people consider this to be ‘healthy’. Often this group of people claim they are FINE. Absence of symptoms is also rarely a state one is feeling energized or inspired.

By the way, I am NOT a fan of the word fine. It’s plain, uneventful, boring, unengaging. It feels so freaking robotic to me. “How are you doing?” “FINE”. What does that mean?  “What to go to the movies?” “FINE”. “Do you want to go out?” “FINE”. It’s really hard for me to feel positive or optimistic about this word.  How do you fell about it? Maybe you can convince me otherwise.

When it comes to the quality of health of the non-symptomatic people, the question is how “FINE” are they really? If that’s you, what’s the chance you are covering up or masking symptoms?  Often, people are already on the right side the meter, experiencing some kind of a symptom. The real answer comes out “I am tired” or “I have a headache” or “I get bloated and gassy after I eat” or “I can’t sleep very well”. “Beyond that, I am fine.”

Like any human, all we want is to feel better. So, intake of coffee, ibuprofen, pepsin and tums, of course, OTC melatonin or even sleeping pills become part of the normal. These are classic ways people self-treat and self-medicate to get back to normal, no symptoms, and feel “healthy” again.

Been there, done that. When I don’t get enough sleep, I self-medicate with caffeine sometimes.  This is still a reality for me my Stress and Hormone Panel shows I am in the Compensatory Phase of HPA axis dysfunction. HPA stands for Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenal.

The reality without judgment is that’s easy to get stuck in allopathic care where an individual or even a practitioner focuses on symptoms and supplementation and focuses on one little aspect of the body or imbalance. The body does NOT work like that.

Let me drop a truth bomb: lack of symptoms doesn’t mean you’re healthy.  Actually, it’s backward thinking when you correlate health with symptoms only. Here are some important concepts behind this Wellness Meter.

  1. Most people associate how healthy they are with the lack of symptoms. However, often when symptoms show up, most people are quick to make them disappear by self-medicating with OTC drugs, beverages including alcohol and caffeine, and ‘comfort’ foods to cover up the symptoms so they get back to feeling no symptoms again.
  2. Depending on the person’s vital reserve and genetic potential, they continue to push through and patch their symptoms to get to feel ‘fine’ again without addressing the problem.
  3. As they continue to address symptoms only and not the real problem, their health and function will keep degrading. At this point, they might see a doctor because they start to feel really crappy and impact their day-to-day. The doctor will likely do blood work, check highs and lows, and might recommend pharmaceutical drugs to help reduce discomfort or pain and get their numbers back to ‘normal’.
  4. As the person continues to life without looking beyond the surface/symptoms, investigating for hidden stressors that are leading their quality of wellness be poor, and making changes to their lifestyle, they will likely be diagnosed with a condition. At this point, if the person doesn’t get it ‘fixed’ and sometime quickly, the condition (s) can lead to death and even premature death.

You can go to different types of practitioners and get out of pain. But, that doesn’t make you well, no symptoms is not an optimum state of health.

The reality is that people don’t call me when they present no symptoms. People reach out when they cannot get rid of extra weight. They’re feeling really lousy, tired all the time. They experience aches and pains. Cannot sleep and sex drive is down to the tubes. They get sick often. Skin doesn’t look good. And they may have been diagnosed with one or more conditions.

As an Integrative Functional Health Coach, I am not in the business of treating and diagnosing people. I want to understand what’s going on. I ask questions and dig into their history to uncover why are those symptoms are happening because symptoms are NOT normal. However, the symptoms do pinpoint to opportunities inside you for us to work. During this detective type of work, I run the right set of functional labs that give us valuable data and correlate to each person. The labs help me identify HIDDEN stressors in the areas of hormones, immune system, digestion and detoxification pathways, energy production, and nervous system.

Guess what, when I put it all together, it usually explains why people don’t feel like themselves anymore. People are so highly individualized it’s unbelievable how different we really are from each other. The healing protocol involves natural therapies in diet, sleep, exercise, stress reduction or elimination of some kinds, and supplementation. I don’t work with anything specifically; I work everything non-specifically as I look at a person’s whole lifestyle so that I can find ways to kind of better help them get over to the healthy side of that wellness meter.


In summary…the good news

The good news is that we can prevent or reduce the aging process by building our health. We don’t have to or should wait to experience symptoms. When we are mindful and choose to fuel our cells with that they need to thrive, we are boosting energy naturally, building immunity so our bodies function as they were designed to from birth to natural cause of death. Most of us have a choice in regards to what we eat, drink, how often we move, how much sleep we get, and how we respond to life curveballs (stress). The more aware we are of our bodies, the sooner we take responsibility for our daily choices and how they are positively or negatively impacting our wellness, the more equipped we become to experience a vibrant life– with minimum medical intervention compared to those who ignore the body’s signaling and focus on patching symptoms.


If you are curious and would like to learn more about how I can help you get to the healthy side of the Wellness Meter, go to www.BeFabBeYou.com right now and schedule a complimentary consult so we can figure out if I can help you and whether we are a fit to work together.

Thanks for listening. If you found this information valuable, share it with someone. And I’d love for you to leave us a rating on iTunes. That will help the podcast reach other awesome people like you.

Talk soon. Tchau. Tchau.

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