Chris Kresser’s Unconventional Medicine Review
Chris Kresser’s Unconventional Medicine is a new book being released this week, I was lucky enough to get an early copy of the book as I went through the Kresser Institute ADAPT training program for practitioners. The new book is targeted towards doctors, naturopaths, health coaches, chiropractors and any other health professional who is interested in functional medicine or switching their current way of practicing towards treating the root cause functional medicine practice.
Table Of Contents
Why we need Functional Medicine
The world is facing the greatest healthcare crisis it has ever seen. Chronic disease is shortening our lifespan, destroying our quality of life, bankrupting governments, and threatening the health of future generations. Sadly, conventional medicine, with its focus on managing symptoms, has failed to address this challenge. The result is burned-out physicians, a sicker population, and looking to prescription medications for the answer rather than looking at the root cause.
What Chris covers in the book is what he teaches in the ADAPT program, getting to the root cause of the disease and focusing on quality diet and lifestyle to address the underlying disruption to our health.
The ADAPT program goes into a detailed analysis of the specific lab tests that can uncover what is causing the imbalance, and while supplementation can help to get you back on track it cannot be done without these three cornerstones of the ADAPT program.
- An ancestral diet and lifestyle, which reflect the recognition that we are evolutionarily mismatched to our environment and that this mismatch is the primary driver of chronic disease.
- A new medical paradigm, called Functional Medicine, which is focused on preventing and reversing, rather than simply managing, chronic disease.
- A collaborative practice model, which offers clinicians a structure that better supports delivering Functional Medicine and ancestral diet, lifestyle, and behavioral interventions to patients.
What is Unconventional Medicine
Unconventional Medicine is both a manifesto and a roadmap to a more effective and humane approach to healthcare, it is the opposite of conventional medicine. It’s based on the recognition that we’ve reached an inflection point at which we can no longer afford not to act on a massive scale, and that the action we take must not come out of the same system that caused—and continues to cause—these problems in the first place.
Kresser’s book is firmly rooted in the latest science and statistics, yet it is brought to life by case studies of patients and stories of healthcare practitioners who have been affected by our dysfunctional “sickcare” model.
The online bonus section of the book gives multiple case studies from Chris Kresser’s own practice, describing the labs that he uses, how he interprets them as well as the treatment plans that he implements. This is invaluable information for anyone who wants to know how to treat holistically, whether you are a practitioner or someone who has been battling chronic illness.
It is written for you if you are:
- A healthcare practitioner working inside the conventional system who is:
- Feeling burned out and drained by the “assembly line” style of medicine prevalent in primary care settings today.
- Tired of ten- to fifteen-minute appointments and managing symptoms with drugs and want to offer deeper healing and transformation to your patients.
- Ready to restore meaning and purpose to your work and rediscover your original passion for medicine.
A healthcare practitioner working outside of the conventional system who is:
- Wanting to upgrade your clinical skills to get better results with patients/clients.
- Seeking a more comprehensive and systematic framework to apply to patient/client care.
- Familiar with Functional Medicine or the ancestral diet and lifestyle and looking to incorporate them into the work you’re already doing.
A patient struggling with chronic health problems and “citizen scientist” or “health activist” who is:
- Trying to address a chronic disease or health problem but does not feel well served by the care that you’re currently getting.
- Familiar with Functional Medicine and/or the ancestral diet and lifestyle and is seeking a practitioner who uses these approaches.
- Hoping to help a friend, colleague, family member, or other person you’re close to who is suffering from a chronic disease.
- Passionate about reinventing healthcare, reversing chronic disease, and optimizing human potential and wants to support this movement however you can.
Chris dispels the myth that conventional medicine is “evidence based” and which is the reason why a lot of doctors resist embracing this type of approach, and with two out of three medical studies being sponsored by the major pharmaceutical companies it is easy to see how the “evidenced based” medicine so favours the use of medications, rather than diet and lifestyle changes.
Plus it is harder to “test” a diet and lifestyle based approach in a research study because everyone would get slightly different programs and research is only set up to test one variable, like a drug.
If you want to find out more about functional medicine, or more about what is involved in Chris Kresser’s ADAPT training program check out Unconventional Medicine.
But if you are sick and want to know how you can implement these changes yourself then reading Chris Kresser’s other book “The Paleo Cure” would be a better option, plus scheduling an appointment with a Functional Medicine practitioner to help guide you on the path back to good health.
Kresser Institute Training Program
If you are a health practitioner and you are interested in becoming a Kresser trained practitioner use the coupon code ADAPTREF500 for a $500 discount on the 12 month ADAPT training program.
You can find out more details about the program at The Kresser Institute
The full 12 month program costs $11,000 and this is the best investment that I made to grow my practice and get better results with my clients – don’t forget to use the coupon code ADAPTREF500 for the $500 discount.