When most people think of medicine, they think of numbers. Cholesterol at 210. Blood pressure at 130/90. A “normal” lab range. Doctors are trained to treat what can be measured.
But what if the numbers look fine, and you still don’t feel well? Fatigue that won’t go away. Pain that lingers. “Brain fog” that makes it hard to think. These don’t always show up neatly on a chart. Yet they shape your daily life in real and powerful ways.
Philosophers call this the phenomenology of illness—the lived experience of being unwell. It’s not just what’s happening inside your cells, but how it feels to live in a body that isn’t working the way it should.
Think about it:
- Fatigue isn’t just “low energy.” It’s the loss of capacity to do what matters.
- Chronic pain isn’t only nerve signals—it’s the shrinking of your world.
- Depression isn’t just chemistry—it’s the fading of meaning and joy.
In conventional medicine, if the labs look “normal,” the story can stop there. In functional medicine, that’s just the beginning. Your story—how you feel, what you’ve noticed, what you’ve lost—is essential data. Symptoms aren’t dismissed; they are clues.
At UpStream, we treat lab results and test findings as important, but we also treat you as important. We listen to your experience, not as an afterthought, but as central to your care. That’s how we connect the dots between your numbers and your life.
Because health isn’t only the absence of disease. Health is the felt presence of vitality, resilience, and the ability to live fully in the world.
