Dr Frances Pitsilis, an integrative medicine specialist, is passionate about helping women find their way back to optimal physical health and wellbeing. She’s become well known in NZ for her various media appearances, including on Is Modern Medicine Killing You?. As an integrative medicine specialist, her advice goes beyond what you’ve heard in a regular doctor’s office, and now in her new book Well Woman, she hopes to reach an even larger number of women to help us to live healthier, happier lives.
Frances’ has distilled her many years of training and research into a book format, to help people besides her patients, unlock the benefits of a more holistic approach to health. Well Woman covers everything from diet and lifestyle, to sleep, hormones, stress management and ageing well. And here, Frances shares eight misconceptions about medicine and health that she constantly hears, and would like to set the record straight on.
Misconception 1: You can get all your nutritional requirements from your diet, and supplementation is unnecessary.
The problem is: who always has a great diet? I think almost all of us sometimes find ourselves stressed and overwhelmed, having quick snack meals and taking shortcuts – for example, getting takeaways that contain additives or are deep-fried, which then affects us.
How do we know that all the nutrition we require is in the fruits and vegetables we eat?
We know that the soil where I live in New Zealand is deficient in selenium and iodine. How about other countries with varied soils?
How long have the vegetables been in the fridge? The nutritional values of vegetables decline over time, even when stored in the refrigerator. (By the way, if you have difficulty getting fresh vegetables, frozen vegetables are very good because they’re snap-frozen, and all those vitamins and minerals are still in there.)
In my experience, I test patients’ nutritional biochemistry, and by improving that, they get better. Prescribing them with vitamins and minerals doesn’t seem to be a waste because it redresses their deficiencies, and their health improves.
Misconception 2: Diet has nothing to do with some health issues, such as acne, energy levels, bowel diseases, and autoimmune diseases.
I’ve found that diet has a lot to do with virtually everything that people come to see me for, including sleep, energy, cognition, mood, anxiety and resilience.
I once saw a patient with Crohn’s disease. He was a 23-year-old university student. He would visit the toilet 12 times a day, and the first visit would be an hour long, so he had no life. I corrected all his nutritional biochemistry– he was deficient in vitamins D and B12. I corrected his hormone deficiency. I also told him to avoid gluten and dairy. Six weeks later, he was having two normal bowel movements a day. Interestingly, he told me that his specialist had told him that diet had nothing to do with his condition!
Up to 85 percent of the immune system sits in the gut, which acts as an indicator to the immune system of what your environment is like. To that end, digestion and gut health are important. This is something I will discuss further later.
Misconception 3: Normal ranges for blood tests are reliable
It’s not unusual for blood test results to vary from time to time or from lab to lab, even blood taken at the same time and measured by the same lab can give slightly different results. Until a few years ago, I thought the variance at my local laboratory was 10 or 20 percent, but when I wrote to them after two patients had done their tests twice by mistake ten days apart with very different results, I was told that up to 40 percent variance was acceptable. This makes me wonder how reliable these tests are.
As a result, I must look at the whole clinical picture the patient brings to me, look at the symptoms they’re talking about, and then examine them. The blood tests are only part of the picture, and I have to assess using all available information. The blood tests themselves can only be a guide.
An important example of this is the vitamin B12 test, which is not very reliable in older people. The original test was a urine test for methylmalonic acid, but we don’t do that now. I suspect that’s because it’s more convenient to do a whole panel of blood tests, including B12. That’s an area that I investigate carefully because I can really make a difference with B12.
For the laboratories to decide their normal range, they test a large number of people and then break their results down by age group and gender to create a normal distribution curve. Then, they arbitrarily apply two standard deviations from the mean and announce that this will be the normal range. However, if you’re looking at B12 in older people, that graph should be very far to the right. If you’re looking at iron in women in the reproductive age group, that graph should also be shifted to the right. Another example is hormones. You don’t really want the normal range for DHEA for a 70-year-old but rather for a 40-year-old.
Misconception 4: Bioidentical hormones aren’t safe
These have been controversial, and I suspect it’s because they’re mostly not made by drug companies, and there’s no big profit to be made from them. However, they are safe when prescribed properly by doctors who have been trained correctly and are appropriately experienced.
Misconception 5: There’s no such thing as frailty syndrome
People don’t talk about frailty syndrome, which you’ll read about in this book. This is the result of age-related depletion, reduction in digestion, depletion of hormones, etc., which renders people frail and with poor quality of life. A few years ago, the World Health Organisation stated that people are living longer, but the average duration of disability before they die is eight years. Nobody wants to experience that. We want to maintain health for as long as we can.
Misconception 6: Omega-3 fish oil doesn’t work
Numerous studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids have anti-inflammatory properties and can provide various health benefits, including reducing inflammation. They protect the brain, heart and eyes, and they’re an important part of my core prescription for health.
Misconception 7: Vitamin D is just for your bones
Vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic. Every patient of mine gets tested for this. In New Zealand, some doctors still think it’s for bones only, and they don’t realise it’s so far-reaching.
Misconception 8: Drugs aren’t necessary
Drugs save lives, and when I ’ve run out of options in terms of lifestyle, diet, correcting imbalances, and natural supplements, then I will use drugs. I am a holistic doctor, but I am scientific, and we need to use everything at our disposal to help patients. I strive to be balanced in my approach at all times. I am dealing with a real person, who is under the influence of many factors. The idea is to help them navigate their health issues successfully in this environment.
Extracted with permission from Well Woman: A Prescription for Lifelong Health by Dr Frances Pitsilis, $39.99 RRP (Upstart Press), out now
