Exploring Functional Medicine with Alicja Sundblade: A Path to Root-Cause Healing and Holistic Wellness

Host (Regina League):

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast. The place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Regina League.

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast here in South Charlotte. And this morning we are gonna be speaking to Alicja Sundblade. She is the owner of Be Well Functional Medicine out of the Matthews area.

Welcome Alicja.

Alicja Sundblade:

Thank you so much for having me.

Host (Regina League):

Absolutely, you do something that I find incredibly interesting.

So Be Well Functional Medicine, functional medicine you hear so much more. I know the first time I heard it maybe five or six years ago, I'm like, what is that? And so what is functional medicine?

Alicja Sundblade:

In my mind, functional medicine is getting to the root cause of your issue. And in traditional medicine, we tend to treat symptoms and not the disease.

In functional medicine, we use advanced lab tests to get to the deeper cause of the problem. What's really underneath all this inflammation that's causing all these symptoms and then provide a way to help you heal from that. And then go on living your best life.

Host (Regina League):

That is super cool. How did you get into this?

Alicja Sundblade:

Well, I was frustrated with my own health issues that I wasn't really getting help for in the traditional medical system, which is horrible because I'm part of that system. I work as an internal medicine nurse practitioner.

I looked at more holistic things to treat myself and just sort of stumbled into it and then used it for myself, decided I'm gonna get certified so I can treat myself and my family in a more functional way. And then ended up turning it into a business because I thought this is too amazing to not share with everybody.

Host (Regina League):

Wow. And I guess part of what you do is the person's symptoms, your patient's symptoms kind of all tie together. Is that what you find?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yes. So, and there are symptoms like fatigue. Everybody's tired these days. Trouble sleeping, stomach issues, brain fog, chronic pain, mood swings, hormonal imbalances, libido changes, skin changes. They're all part of these underlying issues basically.

And so, it's a way that when you get to the root cause, which could be gut issues, could be hormonal things, when we work on those programs, all of those symptoms tend to improve.

Host (Regina League):

So talk about the process. I'm interested, then what?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yeah. So I do a root cause call, a free call, where we chat for 15-ish minutes, sometimes longer, depending on the need, where I get an idea of what you're going through and then decide if I think that it's something that I can help with and kind of go through the options. I have a couple programs, one that focuses more on gut health, one that focuses on gut health and hormone balance, depending on the need of the client. I'm really specializing in perimenopause and menopausal care, because I feel that in traditional medicine, the medical establishment, we have just treated those women so poorly and given them so little options.

And it's very standard. You have hot flashes here, take an SSRI. When really you have hot flashes because you're deficient in hormones.

And if we treat that, we can fix a whole lot of things instead of just the hot flashes. So that was sort of, I think, what really propelled me to want to offer some kind of functional medicine program was just for, especially for the hormonal balance. Like we're just, in my opinion, doing it so poorly in traditional medicine.

Host (Regina League):

Yeah. It's not a fun part of life either for us who have been through that. What sets you apart from other functional practices in the area?

Alicja Sundblade:

I think for one, the functional medicine is being thrown around.

And I think people are saying they're functional and they're not actually certified in functional medicine. So I am certified and I've gone through a lot of additional training to make sure that I know what I'm doing in this arena.

I think me personally, I have programs where I work very closely with my clients and I see them every two weeks ideally.

And I sort of act as a wellness advisor in some ways, like a health coach and help them make these sustainable changes. Because it's not just medicine, right? Like we fix our bodies with movement and good food and good sleep and stress management. And these are things that we haven't been taught how to do.

So I help my clients work through all those things as well as the labs and the protocols and the supplements and that sort of thing. And I find that we have a lot more success when there's like a higher touch or higher frequency touch points with the clients.

Host (Regina League):

And I know you are a virtual practice, which I find is super cool.

And you told me before we got live that you're able to really spend more time and be more frequently involved with your patients. Tell us about that.

Alicja Sundblade:

I think it gives me a lot more flexibility.

For one, I can see anybody in North Carolina versus people that would be limited and can't come to town. I think too, because it's at home, I can offer visits during lunchtime or in the evening and be more flexible to meet people where they're at. And I also think there's something, it's great to meet people in person, but I also think sometimes when we're doing these deep dives into personal health things it's kind of nice to be in the comfort of your own home.

You could be in your pajamas talking with me. So I like that.

Host (Regina League):

Absolutely. I love that idea. Yeah, so what are some of the most common issues that people come to you? And I assume you do men as well.

Alicja Sundblade:

So I can do men, but it's really geared toward women.

I really have a heart for women because I just think we're underrepresented in medicine in general. The studies, most of the studies that we use in reference are mostly done on men.

And I think men have a lot of resources to get their issues treated where women don't. So like, especially in gut health, if a man wants to get his gut back in gear, I can totally help with that. But as far as the hormones go for right now, I'm just working with women on doing bioidentical hormone replacement and supplementing.

Host (Regina League):

So lots of supplements. Gut health, let's just talk about that one and expand on it a little bit. You talk to someone, I assume there's a questionnaire, you're talking about how you're feeling. And so what would that look like if you're able to narrow down to that as an issue?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yeah, so some basic things. I think most of us are not pooping once a day. And so we talk about how often are you going to the bathroom? What do your stools look like? And then there's a lot of symptoms that can come out of not having a healthy gut.

Like you could be getting sick more frequently. Your immune system is basically housed in the gut. So if it's not working properly, you're going to be getting infections more often.

If you have leaky gut, which a lot of us do because our foods have a lot of toxins that eat away at that protective lining, you're going to be absorbing toxins into the bloodstream. And that's going to cause symptoms like fatigue, liver problems, skin rashes, brain fog, things like that. So I will go into sort of what the symptoms are.

And honestly, for most people, the gut is such a great place to start because we've all probably taken antibiotics at some point. We've all done things in our lives to impact what's going on in the gut. And something that floored me that I learned about when doing my training was that one round of antibiotics can upset the microbiota in your gut for two years.

And I thought, oh my gosh, how many people are taking multiple rounds of antibiotics in a year? We are just torturing our gut. And we don't, like in medicine, we prescribe the antibiotics, but we're not often telling patients, like you need to be replacing good bacteria after you're done with this, or you need to be eating these kinds of foods to help fix what we're about to kill with this antibiotic. So then if we're going to work on the gut, we have awesome testing in functional medicine that tells us what good bacteria is there, what bad bacteria is there.

Do you have H. pylori? Do you have parasites? How are your pancreatic enzymes working? Are there signs of inflammation? I mean, the gut tests are super cool.

Host (Regina League):

So what is leaky gut? I should know this, but I don't.

Alicja Sundblade:

Well, don't feel bad about it because this is another thing I think that kind of gets thrown around and it can be really confusing.

But basically, the gut lining has a very thin layer of epithelial cells that are there to protect what's in the gut from going into the bloodstream because the bloodstream is right next to the gut because that's how you absorb nutrients, right?

So you have these junctions that are designed to let small molecules through, like your vitamins, your minerals, the things you want to absorb from what you're eating. But it can become degraded over time from various things and those junctions get bigger and bigger. And so things that shouldn't be able to pass are now able to pass. So you're leaking toxins into the bloodstream.

Host (Regina League):

Wow, and what does that feel like? How do you know if you have a leaky gut?

Alicja Sundblade:

So you wouldn't, right? Like it's gonna lead to a constellation of symptoms and a lot of times it's not even gut related. Like having a leaky gut, you might not physically feel it in your gut.

You might see it in brain fog, fatigue, hormonal imbalances, skin problems, stuff like that. So it's tricky because you don't necessarily feel it.

Host (Regina League):

Okay, so that kind of testing is what, blood?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yes, you can do blood tests, you can do stool tests for that, yeah.

Host (Regina League):

Well, I love that you can do all that. You said from home, the stool testing and everything. Very, very interesting.

So I know insurance is not something, doesn't work for functional health and it kind of stuns me. Talk to me about that.

Alicja Sundblade:

Yeah, so I have my own feelings about this and I really think that our traditional medical system is set up to take care of chronic diseases and promotes chronic disease in the sense that like we put you on medications that then we have to follow up with you every three to six months.

And you can see it, we do what's called a preventative visit every year but we're not really doing anything other than some cancer screenings, right? We're not necessarily doing deep dives into your diet and lifestyle habits. And so I think while we make it seem like we care about prevention, we don't. And in functional medicine, we're optimizing things, optimizing your labs and getting at the root cause of the issue to clear that issue potentially for good.

A lot of the treatments we do, we rebalance your gut, we kill off the bad stuff, repopulate it with good stuff and then you're good for years to come until maybe you have to go on another antibiotic or something or something else happens that we might have to rebuild after that. But I don't think insurance companies reward healing. I think it pays for them to keep us sick.

Host (Regina League):

So I, yeah. I thought of something else. Many of us see multiple doctors for different things and I'm wondering, this kind of pulls everything under one person's eyeballs where you can look and say, I guess if done well, functional medicine can maybe keep you off of the medication eventually.

Is that the goal?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yes, and I think a common misconception as well with functional versus traditional medicine is that they don't work together, right? If you wanna be holistic, you're gonna see a functional provider and that's it. I very much differ. I think that they both work in tandem.

Actually with my clients, they have to have a PCP (primary care provider) that I can have a good working relationship with or I wanna work with them to solve things. I think functional medicine is great for so many things, but sometimes you need a dose of antibiotics for a sinus infection that just won't quit or there's no functional treatment for a ruptured appendix. You have to have that removed, right? So I think there's a place for everybody and for me personally, I wanna work alongside the other things you're doing.

Now, of course, the goal would be to get you as healthy as possible. So you're not developing diabetes, you're not developing hypertension, needing those kinds of things.

Host (Regina League):

Yeah, well, it probably is a little bit scary. I'm sitting here thinking, oh, what foods would I have to give up and what lifestyle changes would I have to make?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yes, and I think that is one of the hardest things I deal with is we have lived this way for so long, it can be hard to make changes. And that's part of the reason too why I do visits every two weeks because we set smaller manageable things. So like if you've never exercised, I might say, well, let's start with taking a walk for 10 minutes outside three times this week, right? Or do it in your living room or just sit and extend your legs up in your chair for 10 minutes, something that feels really manageable.

For the diet, we're not gonna overhaul it overnight, we're gonna make smaller tweaks throughout that help get rid of the toxic burden and help transition you to a more whole foods diet. And something I tend to do is I'll pick a meal and say, let's start with your breakfast, let's clean up breakfast. What do you typically like to eat? And then we'll troubleshoot what kind of changes can we make to get that more in line with food that's gonna make you feel your best.

Host (Regina League):

Yeah, too exciting. I love all this. It makes you feel like, wow, I wanna jump into this myself and learn how to take better care of myself.

So how do our listeners find you?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yeah, so I'm on Instagram at BeWellFunctionalMed. I'm on Facebook at BeWellFunctionalMedicine. I post there daily just tips and tricks kind of things.

And then I try to get videos out there frequently too about ways to up level and take better care of yourself. And then you can go to my website, it's BeWellFunctionalMed.com. And you can book a call with me there. I've got a little tab that says book now.

If you're interested in working with me, that would be the best place to start. That would book that root cause call and we could chat and see if I'd be able to help.

Host (Regina League):

Yeah, and that's a free consult?

Alicja Sundblade:

Yes, it's free.

Host (Regina League):

That's wonderful. Yeah, to see if it's a good fit.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Alicja. This is really, really interesting. I'd love to have you back to talk more.

Alicja Sundblade:

Thank you. It was a pleasure.