wellness
Functional Medicine
Functional medicine addresses the root cause to restore overall balance to your body and well-being
Heal your whole body
Take charge of your own health with a medical practice that looks at the multiple factors that contribute to your body’s unique expression of function.
What exactly is functional medicine?
The functional medicine approach is personalized medicine. It’s a more holistic approach to healthcare that looks beyond symptoms and seeks to understand how diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors may cause disease.
Functional medicine looks at an individual’s medical history and addresses the root causes of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and autoimmune disorders.
By shifting the traditional disease-care focus from merely treating people after they get sick to preventing illness through identifying the precursors of disease, functional medicine eliminates the need for many chronic medications and invasive procedures.
Reasons to seek functional medicine practitioners:
You want a patient-centered approach to your healthcare
Functional medicine is completely patient-centered and aims to treat individuals case-by-case with customized healing plans.
You want to avoid unnecessary medication
Functional medicine practitioners utilize their training in both conventional and holistic medicine to determine what drugs are necessary, which ones can be reduced or removed, and which medications may not be needed at all.
You want preventative care
Functional medicine naturally prioritizes preventative care by fostering a healthy lifestyle that can be maintained and sustained long-term.
Functional medicine is more than just another supplement or diet to try. It’s an entire paradigm shift in how medicine is practiced; starting with the root cause of disease and treating the whole person can show incredible efficacy in improving health, wellness, and quality of life.
Why Use Functional Medicine?
Functional medicine empowers individuals by making optimal health more attainable.
Where conventional medicine alone often acts as a one-size-fits-all band-aid, functional medicine addresses the root cause to restore overall balance to your body and well-being.
Using this approach to medicine helps create a personalized treatment that meets you, and your body’s unique and individualized needs.
What does a functional medicine doctor do?
Functional medicine pratitioners recognize that one condition can cause a multitude of symptoms, just like one symptom can be caused by a number of different conditions.
Practitioners are experts in interpreting how human biology, genetics, nutrition, and other factors can impact health. They perform a comprehensive assessment of a patient’s medical history, lifestyle, and overall health status.
Functional medicine doctors start with a symptom or diagnosis and then apply the best tools available for an individualized evaluation. That means they’re basing their diagnostic process on the whole story of your current symptoms as well as from your past symptoms to look at a possible root cause (or causes) to address.
The Functional Medicine Model
Functional medicine is based on the science of complex systems and recognizes the body’s interconnectivity. Addressing the body with a holistic approach means that no system is left behind in the healing process.
The functional medicine model views the Central Nervous System (CNS) as the core system in your body because it drives and is most impacted by the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our lives.
The CNS interacts with 7 other systems (circulation, digestion, immunity, vitality, detoxification, neural communication, and skeletal) to create harmony in the body so you can live your life to the fullest.
Is Functional Medicine legitimate?
Functional medicine is more than just another trend in health care. It’s backed by science and continually guides the development of new tools that help doctors understand how multiple factors affect health while pinpointing precursors to disease so they can be prevented.
A body is more than the sum of its parts; its functionality is heavily impacted by lifestyle and life experiences. With this in mind, functional medicine physicians combine holistic medicine and conventional medicine to fit individualized needs.
It’s not about chasing symptoms or trying to fit people into categories, but rather working with them as whole individuals so they can live in a way that will allow them to reach their highest level of health and vitality.
What Can I Expect from Functional Medicine Doctors?
The first visit to a functional medicine doctor will be a consultation to get a sense of your medical history and what you’re looking to achieve through treatment.
Then, your doctor will conduct a thorough investigation of how lifestyle, environmental factors, and emotions are impacting your wellness.
Once they have gathered all the information from their findings, they will formulate an individualized treatment plan that addresses each area so that you can start your journey of healing as a whole person.
As you carry on your path, your practitioner will track your progress and adjust certain areas of the plan where necessary, allowing you to optimize your healthier life.
Do Functional Medicine doctors prescribe medicine?
Functional medicine practitioners are conventional practitioners with additional training in the field of functional medicine, and as such, they are qualified to prescribe medication.
Whether or not they do so, however, is highly dependent on the individual seeking treatment.
In your initial consultation, your functional medicine practitioner will go over whatever medications you’re currently taking and have taken in the past. As they determine your customized treatment plan using the functional medicine model, they will assess which drugs are necessary and which ones you can remove from your regiment.
Get your health on track!
Schedule a consultation and learn more today.