Can’t Solve a Problem? Try Using This Functional Nutrition Matrix
I find that when I don’t understand how to solve a problem, what helps me most is a framework.
When it comes to clinical care, yes, we’d all like the simplicity of protocols, solutions and quick-fixes. But if you’re like me, you’ll find that the band-aid approaches rarely work.
You may be familiar with the 80/20 rule when it comes to patient care. Let’s say the 20% for whom the “secret formula for solving X” does not work makes up 80% of the people seeking functional medicine and functional nutrition support. Considering this, it becomes clear that we have to think out of the box. We have to consider frameworks, not formulas.
This is what makes our work exciting, and creative. When it comes to the unknown, and the uncertainty of where to start or what it all means, frameworks can make a big difference.
Functional Nutrition Matrix
One of the frameworks we use the most in our clinic is the Functional Nutrition Matrix.
It’s a conceptual map, where a client case becomes clear.
A framework like the matrix helps us to:
- organize client data
- understand and analyze that data
- make decisions about interventions (including which one might be appropriate at which time)
- better understand potential outcomes when we see like-patterns
- provide the container for LIVING information and documentation — as current and vital as the person sitting in front of us
The matrix helps us to think critically as we plan to provide care.
Why Use a Framework?
Personally, frameworks help me to move out of fear and back into action. And frameworks are FUN. The frameworks we work with allow us to more easily work with REAL health issues in our practice, and allow us to become a key player on our clients’ or patients’ medical team because of our abilities to drive and assess.
Now, to be clear: A framework is different than a protocol or a cookie-cutter program.
Those programs tell you what to do, but I’m concerned that those protocols or programs are holding people back. They get you locked into a certain way of doing things that helps some but not all of the people who are coming to you for help. (This leads us back to the 80/20 rule.)
And when those protocols you’re implementing don’t work, they unfortunately can leave you feeling ineffective, lacking confidence and courage, possibly questioning your ability to do the work you bravely set out to do.
And that’s not OK with me. Because you CAN do this work. You just don’t have all the information you need…yet.
Using the Functional Nutrition Matrix, I invite you to rethink the path that seems most direct, as it may not be the appropriate path for each individual. This is the work that makes a difference in how we can creatively problem solve with our clients and patients — how we reframe patient care.
What we eat and how we live life alters how our genes function. To become an epigenetic master start here.
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Functional nutritionist and educator Andrea Nakayama (FNLP, MSN, CNC, CNE, CHHC) is leading patients and practitioners around the world in a revolution to reclaim ownership over our own health. Her passion for food as personalized medicine was born from the loss of her young husband to a brain tumor in 2002. She’s now regularly consulted as the nutrition expert for the toughest clinical cases in the practices of many world-renowned doctors, and trains a thousand practitioners online each year in her methodologies at Functional Nutrition Lab. Learn more about Andrea.
