Dr. Silberman is a globally recognized leader in the fields of anti-aging, functional, regenerative, integrative, and natural medicine. He has lectured both nationally and internationally, lecturing and training practitioners in Functional Medicine and Longevity as part of the Institute for Functional Medicine, UCSD School of Family Medicine, and Bastyr University. He actively practices in Encinitas, CA at his clinic, The How Clinic, where he uses a personalized approach to healthcare that recognizes the biological uniqueness of each patient.
The Smart Fit Method is lucky enough to call him a member in our Cardiff longevity studio, and recently, he sat down to discuss longevity and health strategies with our members. Members asked him questions they have about their health and broached topics often covered in popular media. Let’s dive into the truth about functional medicine with Dr. Adam Silberman to determine strategies you can implement to live a healthier life.
What is functional medicine?
Functional medicine treats the body as the complex system it is. Rather than merely treating symptoms and reacting to illness and injury, functional medicine seeks to prevent disease, surgeries, and ensure patients are feeling their best. This is a more hands-on approach that runs counter to the medical industrial complex in place in US society.
Have you ever had an illness that your doctor couldn’t identify? Some kind of disease or pain that medicine couldn’t treat? You likely suffered from a lack of understanding, not a lack of resources. Doctors in the USA do not typically have the time to dive deep with patients specifically because they cannot bill insurance companies for time spent discussing things like your dreams or relationships, but believe it or not, both of these things could have a huge impact on the function of your immune system, the health of your GI tract, and more.
Functional medicine doctors exist to treat the person, not the disease. To this end, a functional medicine doctor will go a step further than a primary care or general practitioner, including running more comprehensive tests.
What medical tests should I have done?
We discussed with Dr. Silberman the kinds of tests our clients should consider having done by their primary care doctors. In particular, Dr. Silberman stressed the importance of knowing information from the following tests:
Hemoglobin
Insulin
Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone
These four critical categories are important to test. Knowing your numbers will help inform the protocols implemented by your functional medicine doctor. For more information, check out this helpful article.
How do I understand my test results?
The important thing to consider is that “normal” test results do not equal “optimal” results. A normal result is based on the national average, which in 2024 is far below optimal. Society as a whole is not in a healthy place, and the normal acceptable range for many test results reflect this.
Recently, the medical community has revised its thinking on the most common test, the one that’s performed every single time you head into the clinic: blood pressure. 120/80 has been the golden standard, but take a look next time you go into the office for a check-up, and you’ll notice the wording on the charts have changed to “LESS THAN 120” and “LESS THAN 80” as the normal range.
Normal does not equal optimal. We always want to strive to be better than average when it comes to health and fitness. And aiming to achieve an optimal result may mean going against the grain, especially for women.
Is HRT a safe option for perimenopause and menopause?
There are many doctors who will still refuse to even have a conversation with women about whether hormone replacement therapy is an option for them as they transition into menopause. Women are told that their symptoms are simply “the new reality”: normal, not optimal.
So, is HRT safe for menopausal women or not? The answer to this question is going to be very individual, but generally, it is a sound and safe option for women to undergo HRT to relive the symptoms of menopause.
In fact, the early research from 20 years ago that indicated it was unsafe for women to undergo HRT has been disproven. HRT is no longer considered in the medical community to put patients at risk for cancer. The risks of not taking HRT - sarcopenia and osteopenia among them - far outweigh the risks of taking HRT. The consumption of bio-identical estrogen has been found to improve the cardiovascular system, and bio-identical testosterone improves skeletal muscle.
Talk with your doctor if you are considering hormone replacement therapy as you move into perimenopause or menopause.
How to optimize sleep
Sleep is one of the major areas of improvement for many functional medicine doctors’ patients. Almost everyone can benefit from these techniques to optimize sleep.
Optimize sleep by using a wearable health tracker which will help you identify your sleep issues and keep you consistently aiming to improve, and follow the “12, 3, 2, 1 Rule”: no caffeine for 12, stop working within 3, stop eating within 2, and stop drinking water and viewing screens in the final hour before bed.
The “12, 3, 2, 1” is one of the top protocols we advise at The Smart Fit Method for optimizing sleep health. It can benefit virtually everyone by improving the body’s state moving into the evening. Nullifying the half-life of caffeine in the body is major, as is ceasing work and screens in order to relax the mind. Controlling your food and drink consumption will help prevent nighttime “wake-ups” and trips to the bathroom.
If you want to find out more, check out Dr. Andew Huberman's toolkit to optimize sleep.
Are wearable trackers worth it?
Things like Apple watches and Oura rings are very beneficial for a number of reasons, especially when it comes to sleep health. They reinforce healthy habits and provide accountability to practice those habits. You don’t need to purchase the most expensive model available, either. A few simple metrics to review in the morning can tell you a lot about your sleep health.
What diet does functional medicine recommend?
The very first question on many minds in our Smart Fit Method longevity studio is, “what is the best diet?” Is being vegetarian, vegan, or ovo-lacto the best diet to follow? Paleo or keto perhaps? But what about the Mediterranean diet? What diet does functional medicine recommend?
Dr. Silberman outlines four “non-negotiables” when it comes to your diet: no trans fats, no preservatives, variety of “color” in food, and increasing fiber to 40-50g a day. Everything else in your diet is up to personal taste and opinion. These four keys are the only researched certainty in a healthy diet at this time.
The hard truth is this: no popular diet has been proven to be the best when it comes to improving health and longevity. Influencers may tell you they have research to back their claims, but none of their science will be proven well enough to satisfy a real, medical scientist.
How to identify health challenges areas to improve
Perhaps the most compelling moment of Dr. Silberman’s discussion with The Smart Fit Method came at the end when he discussed how to identify health challenges and areas to improve. Often, we stop noticing our chronic health issues because they become a normal part of our daily life, and we forget that we can take action to improve these issues.
To identify health challenges and areas to improve, it’s important to follow the timeline of your life from birth to present and identify traumatic events. These triggers are often the moment of onset for chronic health issues, and doctors can use questionnaires to help patients identify these antecedents.
We may not even associate, for example, the beginning of our issues with migraines with our mother’s death, or our Irritable Bowel Syndrome with the car crash that plunged us into credit card debt, but according to Dr. Silberman, until we determine our growth over time in a holistic manner, the triggers for these issues may continue to elude us.
Using medical questionnaires to determine your challenges is common practice for functional medicine doctors. One Dr. Silberman cited specifically is something called the “Matrix” tool which puts antecedents and timeline in context with relationships, spirituality, movement and health status to create a whole picture when understanding symptoms.
