About Masterpiece Health and Wellness
My interest in functional medicine started with my initial dream of becoming a physician and subsequently specializing as a kidney specialist. I was born and raised in Nigeria where healthcare is not accessible for many and very expensive for those who have access to it. I have many close family members who have suffered with high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney disease who ultimately succumbed because they could not afford the high cost of dialysis. This came closer home for me when I lost my favorite aunt to kidney disease because we could not afford dialysis.
This background history took me to the very long path of achieving my dream of becoming a conventional kidney specialist thinking that I will be able to help many of my patients to solve their kidney problems and avoid the pain and life altering intervention of dialysis. I was dead wrong! I realized very quickly that I was only putting band aids on their kidney problems as many of them ended on dialysis despite prescribing many “evidence based” medications to control their blood pressure, reduce protein in the urine, reduce their swelling and stabilize their GFR.
I have heard many patients ask me questions but one particular experience that stuck with me and changed my whole trajectory was when one of my patients asked me this questions, “doc, I have been taking this medications for more than 20 years now, when can I come off them and what can I do to improve my kidney function so I don’t get on dialysis?” I gave the usual practiced answer of eat healthy, lose weight, exercise, drink lots of water and avoid NSAIDs. However, on this particular day, I felt uneasy about this answer, and it didn’t just feel enough to truly get my patient to the dream of living a medication free life and not needing dialysis in the future.
I knew there had to be a better way out there of helping my patients and I started searching. I found functional medicine in 2019 which opened my eyes to new ways of approaching kidney diseases by looking at things such as specific hidden toxicities and ongoing inflammation in the body that could be killing the kidneys. I also found out that there was a gut-kidney connection and how specific diet, environmental and lifestyles could be impacting the kidneys. These were things, we were never taught in conventional medicine.
With functional medicine, I no longer had to just tell my patients go figure out how to lose weight and eat healthy, but I could now tell them specifics on what to do and how to achieve their desired results and outcomes.
The transition from conventional to functional medicine has not been an easy one, but once you’ve seen the light, it is difficult to go back to darkness. Once you’ve found the answer, it is difficult to continue to fondle with the question.
