What Is Functional Medicine?

Functional Medicine is a personalized approach that uses system-oriented model that engages patients and practitioners to address underlying causes of disease. This is a complex development in the practice of modern medicine that better addresses needs of healthcare in the 21st century. Functional Medicine uses patient-centered approach that helps to achieve the highest expression of health. This method helps to address the whole person and not just isolated set of symptoms.

Traditionally, a modern approach emphasizes use of drugs or hormones as therapeutic tool to deal with a dysfunction or disease. Examples are conditions including low thyroid function, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, allergic reaction, auto-immune disorders and so on. The training in the standard model is care is to diagnose a disease and match it with a corresponding medication. The standard model of care works well for acute conditions, infection, trauma and emergency situations, but sadly fails in the care of chronic medical conditions that affect at least 30% of population.

Functional Medicine is the field that helps to identify and address imbalances that cause numerous chronic conditions such as digestive, metabolic, hormonal, neurologic, autoimmune and allergic problems that affect most people.

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• Functional Medicine defines everyone as biochemically and genetically unique with individualized needs. This approach is essential to assist natural healing mechanism, rather than attack the disease itself.
• Functional Medicine is a science-based method and backed by latest research to understand and approach complex network of human functions. This helps to approach most complex imbalances naturally.
• Your body possesses “innate intelligence” – very sophisticated mechanism to control and express vibrant balance of all body systems. It is highly organized self-regulated process that has the ability to monitor and heal itself in a presence of essential elements. Functional Medicine principles help to detect and correct the imbalances when this mechanism fails to function accurately.
• Health is not simply the absence of disease. Health is a state of immense vitality that comprises complete physical, mental and social well-being. (Constitution of WHO: Principles)
• Functional Medicine integrates traditional medical practices with “alternative” or “integrative” medicine to create methods of prevention through nutrition, diet, lifestyle modifications, use of latest laboratory and other diagnostic testing. This approach helps to answer questions: “Why do you have this problem in the first place?” and “What can we do to restore normal function?”