Taking a Deeper Dive into the Meaning of “Our Health”
By: Caitlin Policastro, BSN, MSN (ANP / GNP)
Health. A pretty vast term to most. For some of us, health means exercising three times each week, eating all organic, and taking blood pressure medication as prescribed. For others it means managing their stress and anxiety with acupuncture and daily meditation while getting physical therapy for their upper trapezius pain from playing tennis every other day. Whatever health looks like for you, it is something that when we have it, we tend to take it for granted, and when it is lost, we regret never taking better care of it. An intangible, indispensable aspect of our lives that for most, is never linear and a work in progress.
After 8 years of practicing at one of the top integrative centers in the country, I have learned that addressing the root cause of underlying conditions and symptoms is of the utmost importance to gaining back “our health”. This does not mean putting bandaids on conditions with medication after medication. This means, finding out “the why” and fixing “the why” the very best we can.
For example, if Mary Jane has had high blood pressure for most of her life, could this be related to her constant work frustration, unbalanced diet, exposure to heavy metals (water, food, amalgams in her mouth) mixed with minor infections; all putting stress on her liver? From an eastern medicine standpoint, all of this liver stress backs up to the heart. Stress on the heart can also affect our kidney function, and now we have opened pandora’s box of physical dysfunction in the body. However, rather than prescribe medication to lower blood pressure, let’s address her diet/lifestyle, decrease her emotional stress, chelate the body, eradicate those infections and improve her body’s ability to get healthy and detoxify properly.
An easy but somewhat strange metaphor is thinking of the health of our body as an onion. It takes time to peel away each layer, but when we finally get to the core of the onion, the hard work is done. It is important to remember that your body is a powerful vessel that, when given the correct tools, should be able to take care of everything on its own.
I am overly thrilled to bring the knowledge and treatments that I saw help patients in various ways, to this clinic. This will include tailored nutritional IVs and injections, oxidative therapies and supplements, to name a few. In addition to focusing on integrative wellness treatments, I will also be continuing the musculoskeletal work that augments our patient population’s discomfort with trigger point injections, and evaluating and guiding them in the right direction towards the many other therapies we offer that can assist with proper progression of any acute or chronic issues.
In summation, whether you are looking to enhance your performance in an upcoming athletic event, would like to lower your cholesterol, relieve the upper trapezius pain that has been present for months, or just take a deeper dive into preventative wellness, we look forward to helping you on journey to feeling you’re best.