TAKING NOTES: 20 Things Overheard at the Functional Medicine Conference

Editor’s Note: The Institute for Functional Medicine hosted the “Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice” conference in Minneapolis the week of September 16, 2013. Three of Experience Life’s senior editors were able to attend throughout the week. 

1. Functional medicine: “Functional medicine is about causes, not symptoms. It is getting to the root of the problem.” —Mark Hyman, MD
2. Chronic disease epidemic: “We are facing a tsunami of illness. It won’t be war or terrorism that takes the world down, but chronic disease.” —Mark Hyman, MD
3. Gluten: “Gluten is like being pregnant. You can’t be a little pregnant, and you can’t have a little gluten.” —Thomas O’Bryan, DC
4. Food allergies: “If you’re allergic to a food, I guarantee it will be the food you crave most.” —Tom Sult, MD
5. Vitamin D: “If you think you’re going to get vitamin D from a glass of milk, think again.” —Tom Sult, MD
6. Tylenol: “Tylenol is the number-one cause of serious liver injury in this country.” —Robert Rountree, MD
7. Stress: “We live in a yang society. It’s all yang all the time. But, we need to think about how to slow down.” —Tom Sult, MD
8. Parkinson’s disease: “Parkinson’s disease is an environmentally induced illness. Period.” — Robert Rountree, MD
9. Chemicals safety: “Since WWII, over 85,000 synthetic chemicals have been registered with the U.S. EPA. Only a couple hundred have been tested.” —Robert Rountree, MD.
10. Gut problems: “70% of Americans have gut symptoms or diseases.” —Thomas O’Bryan, DC
11. Pesticides: “Only 1 percent of pesticides reaches the desired pest. The other 99 percent drifts off into the environment.” —Robert Rountree, MD.
12. Autoimmune disease and gluten: Every family member of an autoimmune patient should consider gluten sensitivity. —Thomas O’Bryan, DC
13. The glorious gut: “We expect this beautiful creation to function normally in [spite] of what we throw down there.” —Thomas O’Bryan, DC
14. Nutrition ignorance: Food is medicine. But, most med students receive only 12-16 hours of nutrition education. —Kristi Hughes, ND
15. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: “Eating a burnt burger is really no different than smoking a cigarette.” —Robert Rountree, MD
16. Toxins in personal-care products: “Next time you put on skin cream, ask yourself, ‘Would I eat this?’ Because you are eating it.” —Robert Rountree, MD
17. Inflammation: “Inflammation is not a bad thing. Excessive inflammation is a bad thing.” —Thomas O’Bryan, DC
18. Diabetes: Eighty percent of diabetes cases are in the developing world. It is NOT a first-world problem anymore. —Mark Hyman, MD
19. Chewing your food: If you don’t chew your food properly and coat it with saliva, you will not absorb B12, even in foods high in B12, because you need a signaling molecule from the saliva. —Thomas O’Bryan, DC
20. Eating: “Chronic disease is a food-borne illness. We ate our way into it, and we need to eat our way out if it.” —Mark Hyman, MD

“Taking Notes” is a series of posts here at Unedited that include healthy-living tidbits and takeaways that Experience Life team members gather as they attend conferences and events around the country. We hope you find these bite-size nuggets of info as eye-opening as we do.