I am Gerry Gajadharsingh DO, founder of The Health Equation, an integrated health clinic based in the Harley Street Medical District of London. I am delighted to share with you my knowledge, developed over 30 years in clinical practice and lecturing internationally, on how to adopt a more integrated or holistic approach to health

Welcome to my new series of video lectures. A unique “behind-the-scenes” view of the diagnostic and treatment approach I take to help the complex patients that are referred to me at The Health Equation.

This course is targeted at clinicians and healthcare professionals from a variety of backgrounds, both undergraduate and post-graduate/qualified. The course is also open to the general public and those seeking a better understanding for their own healthcare needs.

Key words: Health, Holistic

Course Description

At the end of this course, you will have a greater understanding of the multiple factors that affect your health and the health of your patients.

· Do you have your own challenging healthcare issues?

· Do you have patients where you struggle to help them?

· Do you want a better understanding of the processes that help with working out what’s wrong with you and/or your patient?

· Do you want a better understanding of the language and the diagnostic investigations that are commonly used in clinical practice?

· Do you want to understand what integrated or holistic medicine actually means?

· Do you want to be taught by a very experienced clinician, with over 30 years of clinical experience and lecturing, who has successfully adopted a more integrated approach to healthcare?

If only staying healthy was easy! We have a saying at The Health Equation that “everything is about something else”, the quote was given to me by my lovely colleague and friend Dr Brian Roet. We don’t know what we don’t know. Many of us, both patients and healthcare professionals alike, can often have outdated beliefs that underpin our understanding of health or indeed the advice or treatment we offer to our patients.

Update your knowledge on developing a more integrated/holistic approach to understanding what is wrong (diagnosis) with our or our patients’ health and how a more accurate diagnosis can lead to better treatment outcomes and potentially better health.

The normal, conventional medical paradigm focuses on the discovery of pathology – an actual disease process. This is the standard view that has taken hold for decades and understandably influences both clinicians/healthcare professionals and their patients. However, did you know that many patients attending their GPs when they have symptoms or are unwell are told that no actual pathology can be found, that the tests, if carried out, are “normal”. Whilst finding pathology is obviously important, this is sometimes not as easy as patients imagine. Coupled with the fact that few clinicians are trained to detect functional disturbance, no wonder there are so many people out there struggling with their health and have difficulty resolving their problems.

Patients are often incredulous to be told there is nothing “wrong” when patently there is something wrong, it just happens to not be obvious pathology. We describe these problems as functional.

So, what does this mean?

One of the founding principles of Osteopathic Medicine, my prefession, which is over 140 years old, is that the understanding of structure (anatomy) and function (physiology) is critical to understanding health.

When something in us is not working properly (dysfunction), this can be on a physical/structural/functional level, nutritional/hormonal/biochemical level or on an emotional/psychological level or sometimes on all levels! It is important for clinicians and healthcare professionals to know how to recognise when problems are pathological or functional or sometimes a mixture of both. The important thing is explaining the problem to the patient and helping them develop a better treatment pathway which can include conventional medicine, drugs, surgery etc or, if more appropriate, more functional holistic treatment pathways.

What you will learn?

During the seven series of video lectures we will cover various diagnostic and treatment topics including

· Learn – A better approach to understanding what is wrong (diagnosis) – Function versus Pathology.

· Understand – Functional blood test interpretation, how does this differ from standard medical interpretation.

· Recognise – The value of evaluating breathing behaviour and autonomic nervous system response (90% of our nervous system)

· Review – Patient examples of diagnostic imaging – spine and pelvis

· Review – Patient examples of diagnostic imaging – peripheral joints

· Understand – the often-confusing world of nutrition and metabolism

. Explore a real life anonymous patient who presents with multiple symptoms and how we can get to the root cause of many complex problems

Overview of Course Topic

Be guided through a behind-the-scenes view of how a more integrated/holistic approach to medicine actually works.

I first presented the initial ideas behind this series of lectures to a small group of invited colleagues after I founded The Health Equation in 2004. Obviously, over the subsequent years, the ideas and my own clinical experience have developed enormously. This lecture series is a small snapshot into my thought processes and how I deal with the many complex patient presentations that I see daily in clinical practice.

It’s a combination of slide presentations paired with me guiding you through different topics, supported by real life but anonymous patient stories