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What is all the Fuss About Personalised Medicine?

The next time you are in a public place and have some time to kill, take a look at the people around you. See if you can find two identical people. HINT: you won’t. In fact, on this planet of 7 billion people, you will not find two identical people. The bright sparks among you will be wondering about twins. The answer is no, even twins have huge differences.

So what? Well it is a big “so what”. How would you feel if you rang a plumber for an overflowing toilet? She arrives in the nick of time, hops onto your roof, fixes a suspected leak and drives off into the sunset after giving you her bill. You go back into the house in your gumboots and continue watching your overflowing toilet. It sounds crazy, yet this is exactly what is happening in some parts of health care.

You can have two people with are losing hair, gaining weight, lacking in energy, feeling depressed, low libido and having gut issues. With one it may be hormonal issues, with another it could be neurotransmitters, or thyroid, or parasites, or heavy metals, or adrenals or so many other things. If you treat all the people the same, you may fix one, you certainly will not fix them all. It is like going straight to the roof, fixing a suspected leak and totally missing the blocked toilet.

You are you. You are unique. It starts with your genes, what happened in your mother’s tummy? How were you brought up? What toxins you were exposed to? What stressors were you exposed to? What emotional stress have you been subjected to? So many things shape who and what you are now and make you different. In so many realms we embrace our difference, yet when it comes to healthcare, we accept that we are the same – a suspected leaking roof.

So how do you find out what is wrong with you and how to fix it? The answer lies in “personalised health care.” Find out as much about yourself as you can and the bad news is that a few pages of blood test results is not going to cut it. You may want to start with your finding out what genes you have and which ones have been turned on or off. How much inflammation is in your body? What about free radicals. How is your immune system functioning? What are your toxicity levels? Do you have nutrient deficiencies? Are you digesting and absorbing your food? Are you getting rid of rubbish out of your body? How is your body handling stress? Do you have allergies? Okay enough. I am sure you get the picture. Once you know about you, you can fix you.

Remember that you are you. There is no one on the planet like you. You can try a whole lot of different things, some may help, and some may not. Some may just disguise or delay the inevitable.

New Zealand is leading the world in so many chronic conditions. It is not until you have to sit in a chair and listen to a terminal prognosis that the rubber hits the road. I am suggesting you may want to act in advance and avoid that. Life is a gift to be enjoyed. Make it happen.

Okay, a quick case history. Mary Ellen arrived at our clinic with a barrage of symptoms: headaches, bloating, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, mood issues, feeling the cold, fatigue, low libido, smelly feet, constipation, infertility, bad breath…. And so much more. She had well and truly had enough. We selected the tests to suit her case and her budget. The results were enlightening and almost predictable. She was chronically low in key nutrients, had a food insensitivity, had parasites, poor digestion, imbalanced hormones, dehydrated, low thyroid, low in sex hormones, high in stress hormones, mercury toxicity, poor elimination. It reminded me of one of the gems that I was given during my training. No one thing will ever overcome the human body. It is just too smart and resilient. It takes a gang of things to get the better of it. We worked with Mary Ellen for 6 months. Each month we tackled something different. At the six month mark she announced that this was the best that she had felt in her entire life. For her, it was a good time to stop. For me, well I just want the best for everyone, but every person is in charge of their health and they make the calls. My job is to get them to their goals.

At bewell we conduct a range of individually relevant test to see exactly where your individual body is at and plan an individual program for your individual body.

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