Nested Ecologies

A Multilayered Ethnography of Functional Medicine

Rosalynn A. Vega

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English

University of Texas Press
08 June 2023

Social & cultural anthropology; Complementary medicine

"How functional medicine leverages systems biology and epigenetic science to treat the microbiome and reverse chronic disease.

Each body is a system within a system-an ecology within the larger context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. This is one of the lessons of epigenetics, whereby structural inequalities are literally encoded in our genes. But our ecological embeddedness extends beyond DNA, for each body also teems with trillions of bacteria, yeast, and fungi, all of them imprints of our individual milieus. Nested Ecologies asks what it would mean to take seriously our microbial being, given that our internal ecologies are shaped by inequalities embedded in our physical and social environments.

Further, Rosalynn Vega argues that health practices focused on patients' unique biology inadvertently reiterate systemic inequities. In particular, functional medicine-which attempts to heal chronic disease by leveraging epigenetic science and treating individual microbiomes-reduces illness to problems of ""lifestyle,"" principally diet, while neglecting the inability of poor people to access nutrition. Functional medicine thus undermines its own critique of the economics of health care. Drawing on novel digital ethnographies and reflecting on her own experience of chronic illness, Vega challenges us to rethink not only the determinants of well-being but also what it is to be human."

By: Rosalynn A. Vega
Imprint: University of Texas Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 513g
ISBN: 9781477326862
ISBN 10: 1477326863
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 08 June 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Prelude: Anthropology of and for Healing Introduction Interlude: The Birth of an Anthropologist Chapter 1: Paradigm Shifts Interlude: Stuck in a Web of Chronic Disease Chapter 2: Systems Biology Interlude: Genetic Fate? Chapter 3: (Epi)genetics and Its Multiple Implications Interlude: A “Vampire” No More Chapter 4: The Political Ecology of “Human” Microbiology Chapter 5: The Social Microbiome Interlude: Toxicity Conclusion: Food Justice Postlude: Health Is a Process Acknowledgments Appendix: Persons Described in This Book Notes Works Cited Index

Rosalynn A. Vega is associate professor of medical anthropology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is the author of No Alternative: Childbirth, Citizenship, and Indigenous Culture in Mexico.

Reviews for Nested Ecologies: A Multilayered Ethnography of Functional Medicine

Nested Ecologies is an important read for functional medicine practitioners and advocates, along with other medical practitioners who are interested in learning more about functional medicine, structural competency, and the social and structural determinants of health. Additionally, medical anthropologists interested in alternative medicine, postgenomics, chronic illness, and the politics of access will ﬁnd rich material here, as will food studies scholars interested in clinical approaches to food systems, nutrition, and health. * H-Net Reviews (H-Sci-Med-Tech) * Vega offers a much-needed critique of health care systems that normalize managing, rather than alleviating, chronic illness and disease, and that treat symptoms as individual and isolated rather than connected to and made possible by a person’s living conditions . . . Throughout [Nested Ecologies], Vega effectively merges science writing and medical anthropology and offers critical, timely, and vulnerable discussions of health and health care; food production and distribution; and social, medical, and environmental activism. * CHOICE *