Q&A with Jennifer Lazar
Jennifer Lazar has been a wellness professional for more than two decades. A licensed massage therapist (CMT), certified pedorthist (CPed), and an accredited practitioner of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDNP), she’s helped countless clients find relief and live their best lives. Here, she talks about where she started and what she’s doing now.
Q: How did you get into bodywork?
I remember feeling lots of physical pain as a child from practicing gymnastics 35 hours each week, mixed with ballet dancing. And always there was this drive to fly higher and win more…at the ripe old age of ten! The things young gymnasts ask of their bodies – and the pressure exerted on them by coaches and the drive to win – takes a toll.
Aside from the grueling workouts, I was also required to do extreme diets to maintain my ability to compete at a high level. Gymnastics took a toll on my musculoskeletal system, as well as my gut health and future hormone health too. Mix that with my personal genetics and I had more than just debilitating back pain in my early 20’s. I had insomnia, gut issues, and many food sensitivities that I wouldn’t learn about until my early 30’s when I became interested in functional medicine.
To solve my own pain, I went to massage school in 1999. It was the only non-invasive modality I could find to address all these old injuries that were impeding my life. I thought if I could help myself, then I could help other people with their pain, too.
Q: So, problem solved, and that was the end of it?
Hardly! Early on as a bodyworker, I noticed that some of my clients could get pain resolution to some problems from the type of structural bodywork and massage I provided, but it wouldn’t hold for very long, or it wouldn’t resolve completely. It made me curious.
I started asking lots of questions about their health and noticed that when their biochemistry was unbalanced, so was their musculoskeletal system. I began referring them out for neurotransmitter and thyroid testing and discovered that, when people balanced their thyroid and used amino acids to balance brain chemistry, they held the structural corrections we made on the table better and for longer.
That meant their pain subsided for longer and longer periods of time between sessions, and some people saw their pain resolve completely. It made sense; serotonin regulates our pain cycle, and thyroid regulates so many aspects of our metabolism. In addition to reporting less pain, my massage clients also began reporting other positive changes in their lives. Less anxiety, better sleep, etc. I knew I was on to something!
Q: You saw a bigger picture?
Exactly. The more questions I asked, the more I was able to make educated guesses about how various systems in their bodies were functioning. When I referred them to endocrinologists or functional medicine practitioners, they got some resolution as well. That also made sense. It’s all connected.
Q: Can you give an example?
When I put my hands on a client’s abdomen – to work the illiopsoas muscle related to back pain – many people practically jumped off the table before I had even reached the muscle. Why? An inflamed gut puts pressure on the nerves in your back and can cause…guess what? Back pain! It will also make the superficial layer of the gut sensitive to touch. Think of all the ads you see on TV for over-the-counter drugs for digestive problems. Watching those ads, you’d think think digestive discomfort is completely normal, and we just need a pill to help eliminate the gas, bloating, belching, heartburn, or whatever, after we eat. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Digestive symptoms every time you eat should not be the norm. Nor should fatigue, insomnia, panic, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, nausea, or joint pain. These are symptoms – your body is trying to communicate that something isn’t working properly.
Let’s ask some reasonable questions: Do you think that headaches are caused by an aspirin deficiency? Do you think that bloating and gas are a Gas-X deficiency? Of course not! These are medications for treating a symptom, but the symptom rarely has very much to do with the actual cause of the pain or discomfort. If the symptom was actually the problem, bodyworkers who deal with pain would be out of business, because our clients could just rub the thing that hurts and solve their problem. Something else is triggering what’s going on.
“It’s not about finding what’s wrong, but what’s true.”
Q: And that led you to become a nutritionist?
A functional diagnostic nutritionist, which is not quite the same thing. FDNPs (practitioners of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition) are more like health detectives. We’re trained to order and interpret functional lab tests to investigate how the systems of your body are working (as opposed to disease screening) and how they react to what your body takes in through food and drink, the air you breathe, and even the topical products you put on your skin. Stress, exercise, and sleep all factor in, too.
Q: So, you can find out what’s really wrong with me?
It’s important to know that we don’t diagnose disease; that’s for your physician to do. An FDN can’t tell you if you have leukemia or pancreatitis. FDNP’s have a single “diagnosis” that we call Metabolic Chaos®. Metabolic Chaos is a state of health that exists because of complexities in one’s metabolism and underestimated influences from the environment, so correlation between the symptoms and cause is unpredictable. We’re looking for the links between internal dysfunction and external factors – like diet, environment, and lifestyle – not the link between dysfunction and disease. Many of us used a diagnostic test to find out our blood types in high school biology class. That test told us a fact about our body chemistry, but it didn’t diagnose a disease, because a blood type is just a biological fact, not a disease. It’s not about finding what’s wrong, but what’s true.
Most of the time, we only discover what we’re looking for, and most physicians are only looking for disease. They often don’t have any idea how to help the people who are not diseased, but who are also not well or thriving. That’s where the functional approach comes in.
Q: It seems like a tricky concept.
Here’s a simple example. A client may come to me complaining of chronic fatigue and an inability to concentrate at work. Their doctor ran labs and said all of their bloodwork is normal, so there is nothing be done, but the client is exhausted and can’t get their work done. I may run functional lab tests and ask them to record everything they eat and drink while waiting for the results. When the labs come back, they might show a high levels of candida and a series of food sensitivities the client wasn’t aware of. So we will adjust their diet to remove substances and/or foods that promote yeast growth, use supplements to help eradicate candida and escort it out of the body in a safe and healthy way, balance gut bacteria, and then document how the client feels over time. When we get it all dialed in correctly, the client should begin to feel as good as they have ever felt.
If the client feels better, it isn’t because we are treating a disease. We’re identifying causes for imbalance in one or more of the body’s systems and taking steps to correct that imbalance. Of course, there’s a lot more to it, but it’s basically about knowing things you didn’t know before about your own body. When we ask the right questions, act responsibly on the information, and lock in those corrections, the results can be life changing.
Q: Can anybody do this?
Absolutely! But FDN requires a commitment of time and resources. My current programs are five and eight months long, and the process only works if clients are willing to put in the work, paying attention to their habits and keeping track of how the changes we make affect them. Metabolic Chaos did not happen overnight, and it will not resolve overnight. They need to be willing to show up for their own well-being. For those who are ready, I’ll be right there with them.
Interested in becoming certified in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition? Learn all about the program here.