As he often does, Dr. Bland contextualizes COVID-19 in a way that brings clarity and renewed purpose. Having originally shared these thoughts via email, Dr. Bland kindly approved us to share them here for others too.
“I think that it is important for us to remember that COVID-19 is a lifestyle disease that is remediated through the way we live, act, eat, and socialize. It is the classic example of a personalized lifestyle health care issue. We will always be confronted with communicable viruses. It is how we as a global EACH manage our environment, lifestyle and social structure that determines its pathogenicity. The Functional Medicine matrix provides the only way to address these aspects of a condition such as COVID-19 in the absence of an immunization to prevent it. We look to medicines to be a solution to treat these viruses when we know that there are still 770,000 people who died of HIV infection last year. Pharmaceuticals are only a part of the solution, the majority of the solution lies within the social determinants of disease addressed by the Functional Medicine model.”
– Dr. Jeff Bland