2024 September 9
The ER taught me so much of what I took into my private medical practice several years later. Be in the moment. Listen. Look. Check; double check; triple check. After 5 years of fulltime ER experience in New York City, it was time to move on and lay the foundation for my future medical practice. I continued working as a traveling ER doctor for 7 years while building my practice of integrative medicine. Two years of self-styled sabbatical studies in acupuncture, nutrition, and botanical medicine brought me full circle back to New York. I thought I was going to be a country doctor until that point.
What the ER experience showed me was that most clinical issues which brought people to the ER in the first place were manifestations of chronic illness. Poor diet, stress, lack of exercise, social and familial disintegration, addiction, got little airtime in the ER setting. I wanted to move to a setting where I could deal with people at the level of root causes.
When I started my practice 26 years ago, most of my patients were older than me, or not much younger. As I’ve grown older, that has flipped, and most of the people who I see today in my office are between the ages of 20 and 35, millennials and Gen Z. Nonetheless, the preponderance is beyond what mere math would predict. The youth of America is in the throes of a major health crisis unlike that faced by any generation in the past century.
The CDC’s own figure is that 43% of children in the US have at least one chronic illness. The incidence of allergic diseases, asthma, autoimmune disorders, and autism have escalated in the generations born since 1987. A series of initiatives, legislative and industrial, within the space of several years between 1986 and 1994, approximately, coincide with the sea change in the health of America’s youth.
Digestive disorders are also rampant. In 2022, the American Gastroenterological Association reported that 60 to 70 million Americans were suffering chronic digestive disorders that interfere with their daily lives. GERD, irritable bowel syndrome, undiagnosed celiac disease, inflammatory bowel diseases, and bloating and hypersensitivity disorders of the bowel are among the more common digestive issues impacting young people under the age of 35.
Integrative and functional medicine approaches, combining orthodox and alternative medicine, including a thorough history and physical examination, in depth laboratory assessments, dietary guidance, well selected supplementation, as well as mind-body approaches, are some of the therapeutic interventions which can make all the difference.
