By Dr. David Pollack

After almost 20 years blessed with the opportunity to help people using a Functional Medicine

approach, I have noticed a significant change in new patients. I hope this change is a sign of a

greater shift in all of society.

For about the first 10 years, most new patients required coaching on food, nutrition and diet. I

have amazing staff, two who handle those with enthusiasm and expertise. In the past 5 years or

so, the majority of new patients have been eating better than I might have coached them 10 years

earlier.

Despite people eating better than I could have hoped, my office is the busiest it’s ever been. The

types of problems people have are no different and, in some cases, they might be more

complicated. But this doesn’t mean that eating well doesn’t matter—it definitely matters. In fact,

this caused me and my associates a dilemma that I never could have foreseen.

By eating healthily, my new patients are doing themselves a great service even when they can’t

see the difference. (But I do.) In my first decade of practice, when I had a consultation or

examination with a patient, everything hurt, it was intense and I would find issues beyond what

the patient knew of. It was sometimes overwhelming for them. Lately, the situation has been

different. Besides eating well, my newer patients are very educated on their issues and functional

medicine concepts. Examination and consultations are a bit different now. While the main

problem is certainly there with a couple side issues, results are more subtle, more specific, even

hidden at times. My craft needed to become more refined, more sensitive. Eating well has

actually done its job, but ironically it made my job more difficult. On the other side, my new

clients had become more frustrated, less hopeful. They made all these changes and from their

perspective very little changed with their health challenges. Most of my colleagues in the

functional medicine field are still using early 2000s boiler plate treatments and strategies to deal

with this new type of patient. As a result, I have expanded and searched for more and new

methods to help. Things like advanced acupuncture, moxibustion techniques, life-changing

emotional release methods and detoxification strategies, on top of the tried-and-true methods.

Indeed, there are people with nutritional problems. Not the right diet, allergies, poor vitamin

load, etc. But many people are starting to realize there is something else going on—likely a

functional issue. Something in their body is not working right. Food will not fix that. That

doesn’t mean diet doesn’t matter, but putting higher quality gas in your car doesn’t fix a busted

engine or transmission (although bad gas might make it worse). Poor diet might add

inflammation to an already struggling system and a good diet might decrease that inflammation,

but it isn’t solving the problem. We need to identify the engine problem and fix it, not just play

with the fuel. Again, this is not to say that some issues aren’t nutritional, but from my

experience, most people have functional issues and they can be found and repaired.

Pollack Wellness is located at 66 Commack Rd., #204, in Commack, NY. For more information, call 631-462-0801 or visit PollackWellness.com. 

About Dr. David Pollack