Food poisoning, periods of intense stress, certain prescription drugs, and even some supplements can create temporary digestive issues. However, if these issues persist—often beginning around the three-month mark—there is a shift in how the body responds to the problem. Instead of attempting to fully repair the disturbance, the body begins to adapt to internal imbalances. This is the true beginning of chronic digestive illness.

As a digestive disorder persists, it often becomes more complex. One dysfunction leads to another. Functional deficiencies can emerge, contributing to a gradual decline in the system as a whole. Secondary systems become involved. All the while, the body attempts to regulate these changes in order to maintain balance, preserve function, and keep you on your feet.

Here is a brief list of common imbalances seen in chronic digestive disorders:

• Impaired energy production and recovery
• Inefficient digestion and transformation of food
• Disrupted gut motility and timing
• Heightened or misdirected immune activity
• Altered microbial balance and fermentation patterns
• Dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system
• Reduced adaptive capacity to stress and change

It is important to note that most of these imbalances cannot be directly measured or visualized through standard medical testing or imaging. In some cases, modern diagnostics provide important clues but not conclusions. In other cases, we are left largely in the dark.

Fortunately, traces do appear. Constellations of symptoms can offer a deep view into what is happening within a person’s body as a whole. Many of these symptoms are present but overlooked, and they are not typically explored in the medical treatment room. Patients with digestive disorders can experience a large number of symptoms, including changes in the timing and character of:

• hunger
• thirst
• pain
• bloating
• bowel function
• urination
• mood
• movement
• temperature
• sleep
• energy

Issues in these and other areas are often referred to as problems. They are also communications. This is a person’s body attempting to share not only what is wrong, but also what is being done about it. These messages are not simple, but they do tend to organize themselves into commonly seen clinical patterns.

For those who are not acquainted with traditional medicine—especially medicine from the Far East—it can be challenging to imagine how medicine was even possible in the past, before modern anatomy and physiology, and before testing and imaging. This is the answer. In our effort to peel back the layers and look ever more deeply within the body, we gradually stopped giving attention to the body’s own communications. At this point, we have largely forgotten that these communications even exist.

Today, the best answers to digestive disorders lie in a middle path. We take the knowledge and insights gained through modern science and combine them with the knowledge and insights documented by ancient medicine. Already, there is scientific support for Pattern Differentiation as a basis for clinical care.

This overlap produces a rich soil, and it is the basis for Herbscript. It allows us to make herbal formulas from chinese herbal medicines that are as complex as a person’s illness itself—balancing many factors at once, strategically, precisely, and comprehensively. Through Pattern Differentiation, we can quite literally bridge East and West, ancient and modern, in a way that is medically rigorous and effective in improving your personal health.