Many people these days are turning to functional medicine not only to help treat their health conditions but also to optimize their health. Some of the reasons patients come to me is because they aren't finding help in the mainstream medical system, they want to find the root cause of their health issues, they want options to medications, they want to optimize their health, and/or they want long term solutions that are going to restore their health and vitality. We will discuss what functional medicine is and how it can help you..
Functional Medicine is a systems approach to health and disease that looks at finding the root cause of disease. Diseases can be caused by a wide variety of issues such as genetics, diet, lifestyle, nutritional deficiencies, food allergies, hormone imbalances, etc. Functional medicine looks deeper into the patient's health issues in order to find a more holistic treatment that can provide long term relief.
Functional medicine doctors differ from mainstream medicine (aka allopathic medicine (MD)) in many ways. Some of the ways functional medicine doctors differ is in our philosophy of health and disease. Three of these differences are finding the root cause of disease, a patient centered approach, and functional lab testing.
Finding and treating the cause of disease vs. using medication to treat the symptoms. This is done by using cutting edge lab tests along with detailed patient history, and a deeper knowledge of how the body and organs function as a whole. Unless time is taken to investigate and address the root cause of disease it is impossible to find long term health solutions that don't require years of medications. But if the root cause of disease is investigated, be it genetics, nutritional, vitamin deficiencies, food allergies, hormone imbalances, dietary issues, lifestyle issues, mental or emotional issues, then health can be restored and optimized so that people can live a full, healthy life.
Patient Centered Approach-Most functional medicine doctors spend much more time in getting detailed histories. Functional medicine takes into account all current and past medical issues, family genetics, physical, mental or emotional traumas, nutritional, environmental and lifestyle issues. By determining how all these factors interact with each other, holistic treatment plans can be used to restore health.
Functional Lab Testing consist of using labs that are on the forefront of medicine. Mainstream labs only detect health issues once they have progressed to an advanced stage, but health and disease are continuous and should be approached in that manner. Functional lab testing consist of using mainstream labs, (ie cbc, chem panel, insulin, leptin, thyroid, etc) but goes over the results with more of a functional medicine approach and also uses advanced labs such as adrenal hormone panels, food allergy testing,nutritional evulation, digestive analysis and genetic testing (mthfr, snps, etc). By using advance labs, finding the root cause of health issues and treating those can provide relief from acute and chronic health conditions.
So if you or a loved one has been suffering and is looking for a better approach to their health or would like to optimize their health and live a healthier life, give us a call or schedule an appointment here.