Integrative or functional medicine is a type of medicine that takes into account the whole person (body, mind, and spirit). Treating the entire person aims to optimize the body’s natural abilities and focuses on therapies that seek first to prevent disease, then to intervene in the disease process. One of the most important tenants of integrative medicine is that the person being treated actively participate in the care.
PEMF therapy, then, fits seamlessly into the philosophy of integrative medicine. Electromagnetic therapy is safe, reliable, and effective a huge percentage of the time. Perhaps more importantly, it can be used at home. This creates self-reliant self-care, the essence of prevention.
Part of thinking holistically is acknowledging that the only way to truly be healthy is to treat the root cause of a condition instead of just managing symptoms. In many cases, symptom management is important and necessary, but it should be done while simultaneously seeking out the root cause of the disorder.
Rarely can a single modality solve a problem completely. In much the same way that a solid house cannot be built without solid bricks and mortar, so a healthy body cannot be built without proper nutrition, spiritual balance, and stable cellular communication. While magnetic field therapies can go a long way in making your body a healthy environment for new cells to be ‘born’ into, they cannot do it all. Nutrition, supplements, and lifestyle issues need to be addressed for any condition for which magnetic therapy would be considered.
Magnetic therapies cannot add anything to your body – the magnetic field is not residual and it’s not magical. If you have low potassium levels, you need extra potassium. If your sodium level is too low, you need extra sodium. Magnetic therapies will not give you sodium or potassium. So, in many cases, it becomes important to supplement our diets with the nutrients required to maintain overall health.
A major part of Dr. Pawluk’s emphasis as a holistically-minded physician is that we must always treat the whole person in order for any single part of the body (or disease process) to truly improve. If you have a headache because you’re banging your head against the wall, the best course of action is to stop banging your head against the wall, not to treat the symptoms of headache. Addressing the causes is an important part of getting the best results from any kind of therapy, including PEMF therapy. Supporting the body to be as healthy as possible with good lifestyle choices allows any therapy to be more effective.
