On building resilience

[SusanJ]

I'm on Chris Kresser's email list and he sent this short email out last week. For those of you who aren't, I thought I'd share his comments. Some of us here might just fall into categories where building resilience is more helpful than finding and treating a "root cause" as sometimes practiced by FM doctors.

One of the best books I’ve read in a long time is Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, where he argues that—despite popular sentiment to the contrary—things are generally getting much better for human beings, not worse.

I think Pinker underestimates some of the challenges we face. But overall, I found his arguments to be both compelling and well-supported.

One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was where he criticized what he calls “root causism” as an approach to solving society’s most pressing problems. He argues that most of these large-scale problems are so complex and nuanced that it’s virtually impossible to find the root cause, and that the best way to address them is instead to make a series of smaller changes designed to alleviate the symptoms.

I couldn’t help thinking of potential parallels to healthcare. As you know, one of the core principles of Functional Medicine is to address the root cause of disease, rather than just suppressing symptoms.

But is that always the best approach?

In some cases I’ve found that it’s more effective to focus on building resilience by attending to the foundational factors that contribute to well-being, such as diet/nutrition, sleep, stress management, physical activity, pleasure, and play.

This doesn’t mean that the root causes don’t get addressed. It just means that the method of addressing them is different. Instead of trying to figure out what they are and targeting them specifically, we strengthen the body’s own defense and repair mechanisms and trust in its wisdom to find the right path back to health.

Of course, building resilience and addressing the root cause aren’t mutually exclusive approaches. But energy, time, and attention are limited resources, so sometimes it makes sense to focus on one more than the other.

Building resilience is always a good idea, but I’ve found it to be particularly helpful as a strategy in the following situations:

When discovering the root cause is proving to be difficult
When the patient is experiencing “testing and treatment fatigue”
When it’s clear that the patient is not attending to some of the key determinants of health (sleep, stress, etc.)
When the root cause is something that isn’t reversible
I hope this helps!

In health,
Chris

[NF52]

This is something we all need to think about, Susan. Thanks for sharing—I think it could apply to the Prevention & Treatment forum. Of course, good health coaches do pay attention to sleep, play, etc. But sometimes we assume that the search for SNPs will bring us to the root cause, and instead I find it brings battle fatigue.