About Dr Ibrahim – Functional Medicine certified practitioner
My background
I am Dr. Sharief Ibrahim, a doctor of 40 years’ experience, 25 years of them in the NHS. I have been honoured to serve over 50,000 patients, who attended hospital with hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, thyroid disease, arthritis, brain, bone, gut and many other chronic conditions.
I graduated from Khartoum medical school in Sudan in 1980. I pursued a career in general medicine in the UK, gaining the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) of London in 1996. I achieved consultant status (CCST) in 2003 with dual accreditation in general and geriatric medicine, after five years of higher medical training at Guy’s, St Thomas’s and Kings College Hospitals.
I was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) of Glasgow in 2008.
I continued to work as a consultant physician in the NHS in Ipswich, Dundee, Edinburgh, King’s College and East Kent hospitals, managing stable chronic diseases and those presenting as acute medical emergencies such as heart attack, stroke, arthritis, liver, kidney and heart failure.
I recently became certified as a practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a tool necessary to release negative emotions associated with chronic diseases.
My health scare: the inspiration for The Vitality Clinic
Over 20 years ago, working long hours in the NHS, my health declined due to poor diet, high stress and inadequate sleep. I was overweight, I had arthritis, and I could not walk half a mile down the road to the train station. Following emergency surgery, I ended up in my intensive care unit, as the most severe patient.
I decided to take control and turn my health around.
Fast forward to the present day: I am in my 60s, I’ve reduced my waist size by 6 inches (from 38” to 32”), run over 120 marathons and have never felt in better health from obesity to 100 marathon club.
Do you have an acute or chronic disease?
If you’ve broken your leg or are having a heart attack, there’s nowhere better to be than in hospital. However, mainstream medicine manages chronic diseases at the level of their symptoms, ignoring the underlying cause. Because the root cause is not being addressed, patients continue to deteriorate while also taking drugs for the rest of their life!
So, we are living longer, but too many of us are doing so in failing health, hanging around dependent on care.
As a doctor, this approach left me dissatisfied, as I was essentially providing unsuccessful treatment.
Learning points!
I realised that being a doctor had given me great experience in managing the disease, but I hadn’t got a clue even how to reinstate my health.
I was confident that there was an active genetic component to my health issues as most of my problems also ran in my family. Using common sense, I focused initially on adopting a healthy diet and increasing my physical activity. Little successes added up over the years, culminating in my completing my 100th marathon.
I continued to refine my methods until I discovered Functional Medicine (FM) – the 21st-century solution to chronic diseases. FM resolves the root cause of chronic illness and corrects lifestyle to restore body function rather than just prescribing drugs. I was so excited by FM that I spent three years, completing full training in Functional Medicine in the US.
Being on a mission drove me – after 25 years in the NHS – to leave and set up The Vitality Clinic, based in Weybridge, Surrey and Harley Street in London.
Hi-tech tests, low-tech treatment
I like to describe the FM process as hi-tech tests, low-tech treatment. FM asks the question “Why?” to correct the body’s systems’ imbalance rather than “What?” is the diagnosis to be able to prescribe medications.
FM allows you to see one consultant who’ll look after your whole person instead of several who would each take a narrow medical view based on their medical specialism. It empowers you to boost your total health, rather than treat your symptoms, which means many diseases will take care of themselves.
A recent inspirational example
A 70-year-old ex-cyclist was taking pills for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and gout.
He came to see me with general lethargy, frequent palpitations and severe arthritis. He had to sleep in a reclining chair for severe back pain, suffered insomnia and irritable bowel symptoms. After a few months on a healthy diet, regular exercise and appropriate dietary supplements, he reported back to me and said: “I need to start a trouser fund as my clothes are falling off me.” He had lost two stone, and his blood sugar and blood pressure were normalised. He came off his regular medications and went back to enjoy gardening, social activities and cycling several miles daily.
Who can this approach help?
If you are over 40, you need to take stock of your health to enjoy a full life. At this age, people attending standard care go into steep health decline Vitality Curve. You
need to discover which parts of your body are in perfect working order and which parts that need attention. We can do this with our high technology to examine your inherited genes and body systems in great detail at a molecular level. We often find that you have a deficiency of an essential nutrient or an excess of a toxic substance that you need to get rid of. Frequently, there’s a ‘traffic jam’ in your biochemistry requiring an active nutrient to bypass a genetic weakness.
Functional medicine has shaken the world with a paradigm shift: you can now prevent & reverse your chronic disease using the 21st-century medicine rather than continue to manage your condition with drugs for the rest of your life.
Following this approach, you can transform your health by adding more years to your life and more life to your years!
Please complete the Free Health Check below and we will come back to you with a mini medical report and the possible next steps towards enhancing your health.
Alternatively, you can Book a Clinic Appointment and we will come back to you with the clinic details.
Dr Sharief Ibrahim is an internationally recognised consultant physician and Functional Medicine practitioner of 40 years’ experience, 25 years of them in the NHS.