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Functional Medicine:
Treating the Whole Person

Conventional or Orthodox Medicine centers around addressing a person’s symptoms, whereas Functional Medicine also focuses on why those symptoms exist in the first place. Functional Medicine is a type of holistic medicine (used by MD’s as well as Natural Therapists) geared toward understanding the underlying cause of ill health.

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” ~ Thomas Edison

Functional vs. Conventional Medicine

Conventional and Functional Medicine differ in several significant ways.

A conventional medicine focus involves using symptoms to make a diagnosis, then devising a treatment plan for the illness that has been diagnosed
Conventional medicine focuses on sickness; it is trauma-based and disease-centric
Conventional Physicians are geared to treat the immediate problem, whether it be a broken bone or virus
Conventional Medicine works well for acute injuries, but not so well for diagnosing and treating chronic illnesses and conditions
Most Conventional Medicine doctors are not well trained to determine causes of chronic disease
Furthermore, they are generally not instructed on how to use nutritional or exercise strategies as part of a treatment plan to prevent chronic illness. Instead, the go-to remedies are typically medication or even surgery

The Holistic Approach to Healthcare

Functional medicine is a new approach. This relatively new field has been specially designed to address the ‘why’ to get to the root cause underlying a disease. Functional medicine is a much more comprehensive approach that generally delves further— beyond the prevailing symptoms. Conventional medicine is more centered on the disease. The patient gets a diagnosis of ‘x’ disease; then the treatment plan focuses on ‘x’ disease. By contrast, Functional Medicine focuses on the patient – the ‘whole person,’ including:

Family history
Genetics
Diet
Nutritional deficiencies
Environment
Stress level
Energy level
Exercise regime
Sleep patterns

This patient-focused approach is what the Institute for Functional Medicine calls a systems-level approach. The Institute describes this approach as an ‘evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century.’

A Genetic Example of Functional Medicine

Functional medicine is built on the premise that many aspects of our current, conventional medical practices are based on outdated and inadequate models for modern patient care. Use the human genome as one example. Humans were once thought by doctors to be ‘hardwired’ genetically for disease. You either had the gene for a particular disease, or you didn’t. After decoding the human genome, we now know differently–that genes are expressed or not expressed. This expression means that a disease will (or will not) present itself based on factors like environment, stress, lifestyle, and diet.

The Functional Medicine Practitioner

Because Functional Medicine addresses the whole person, practitioners look for interactions between systems rather than looking at a set of isolated systems. A Functional Medicine practitioner might look at interactions between genetics and lifestyle, or genetics and the environment. The premise of this form of medicine is that everything is interrelated. When grouped, all of these factors play a role in determining whether (and why) a chronic disease will be present in a person.

Functional Medicine Approach to Health – Based on Three Principles:

Patient-centered care: Practitioners listen to the patient and learn about the whole person—physical and emotional–mind, body, and spirit
Integrative approach: Body systems exist in an interconnected, complex web of interactions
Best practices: the best practices of Western medicine are utilized in addition to nutrition, diet, and other techniques like stress management and detoxification

All Body Systems Are Connected

Conventional Medicine generally operates in silos – specialist roles. You see a Cardiologist for a heart problem and an Orthopedic Practitioner for a bone problem. A different doctor is consulted depending on which body system has current presenting symptoms because conventional medicine can view organ systems as independent of each other. Functional Medicine is founded on the principle of the interconnections between the body’s organs, systems, and functions. Chronic diseases are believed to occur because multiple organ systems are involved – all contributing to the disease state. If you have poor digestion, your intestines are not functioning correctly and that can affect your immunity, mental state and much more.

All People are Unique

People are not ‘one size fits all,’ and neither are their diseases. A functional medicine practitioner treats every patient as a unique and complex system. Something that works for one patient may not work for another patient with the same disease. Each of us has an allostatic load – a personal threshold of what the body can handle before it breaks down. Outward signs like joint pain, skin outbreaks, weight gain, and decreased sex drive are signs of a breakdown in the allostatic load.

The Health Continuum

The functional medicine view of health is viewed on a spectrum. Health is a relative state, with vitality at the optimum end, and disease and death at the other end. Body systems fluctuate on that spectrum given fluctuations in the allostatic load. Therefore a person’s state can vary between optimum health and illness.

The Promise of Functional Medicine

Chronic diseases like cancer and autoimmune diseases have sharply increased around the globe. Conventional medicine has made great strides in the treatment of those diseases, however, for many people, there is no known cure.

Diabetes is at epidemic proportions. Obesity is the primary indicator that a person will develop diabetes. Nearly one-third of all American adults are obese (with similar statistics elsewhere in the western world), and the number of overweight children has tripled in the last four decades. Diabetes is connected to immune issues, nerve problems, and sleep disturbances.

Functional Medicine is promising a new and different approach specifically designed to prevent diseases like Diabetes as well as ADHD, Alzheimer’s, Auto-Immune Disease and many more. Functional Medicine determines how and why illness occurs and restores health by addressing the cause of disease for every individual.