What Is Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine is patient- centered, medical healing at its best. Instead of looking at and treating health problems as isolated diseases, it treats individuals who may have bodily symptoms, imbalances, and dysfunctions.
Functional Medicine practitioners often use advanced laboratory testing to identify the root cause or causes of the patient's health problem. Old-fashioned medical diagnosis helps too, in the form of listening carefully to the patient's history of symptoms and asking questions about his or her activities and lifestyle.
For treatment, Functional Medicine practitioners use a combination of natural agents (supplements, herbs, nutraceuticals, and homeopathics), nutritional and lifestyle changes, spiritual/ emotional counseling, and pharmaceuticals, if necessary to prod a patient's physiology back to an optimal state.
In addition, educating patients about their conditions empowers them to take charge of their own health, ultimately leading to greater success in treatment.
Treating Symptoms Versus Treating the Person
In the dominant health care model today, medication is used to get rid of people's symptoms. If the patient stops taking the medication, symptoms generally return.
Functional Medicine approaches health problems differently. Instead of masking the problem, it aims at restoring the body's natural functioning.
Although Functional Medicine practitioners may prescribe pharmaceuticals, they use medications to gently nudge the patient's physiology in a positive direction so the patient will no longer need them.
The Two-Pronged Healing Approach of Functional Medicine
To battle chronic health conditions, Functional Medicine uses two scientifically grounded principles:
1. Add what's lacking in the body to nudge its physiology back to a state of optimal functioning.
2. Remove anything that impedes the body from moving toward this optimal state of physiology.
Plainly put, your body naturally wants to be healthy. However, the body may be missing things needed to function at its best, or something might be standing in the way of its optimal functioning.
Functional Medicine first identifies the factors responsible for the malfunctioning. Then it deals with those factors in a way appropriate to the patient's particular situation.