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During a recent Metametrix sponsored breakfast at the IFM Symposium in Hollywood, Florida, Dr. Todd LePine gave a compelling presentation entitled The Gut-Brain Connection: An Inside Look at Depression.
The human system is a complex adaptive system embedded in its environment and all aspects of the environment effect it.
The body is built on fractal patterns - the digestive system is a mirror image of the brain - each digesting different things and creating a self/non self interface - specifically the small intestine.
Most diseases have an inflammatory basis and this more than often starts in the GI tract, the primary seat of the immune system and sense of self identity, due to dietary, emotional or mental disturbances.
It seems that Western Medicine still hasn’t an understanding of the fractal system dynamics that underpin the universal evolutionary process but are well on their way to rediscovering it - albeit from a reductive scientific paradigm rather than from a complex adaptive / energetic/ consciousness paradigm like Ayurveda.
I disagree with the hypothesis that diet and lifestyle are a greater predictive factor than genetics or what we refer to in Ayurveda as Prakruti - the metabolic constitutional profile of the person. I hypothesise that the reason for this assumption is that the focus has been on the sickness end of the health spectrum rather than the health end - in Ayurveda this is called Vikruti. I predict that with more experience with the health end of the spectrum it will become clearer that it is possible to predict the effects that specific foods and other environmental factors will have on genetic profiles.
My experience is that the types of tests mentioned in this presentation are very useful to obtain patient compliance - people are far more likely to respond to 'physical evidence' in the form of a report than the implied synthesis that comes from the multifactorial diagnosis of Ayurveda. The downside is that it leads to reductive thinking rather than a systemic understanding, Having said this functional medicine is moving in the right direction and will eventually rediscover the systems side.