Functional Medicine – You ask different questions when you look through a different lens.

 The term Functional Medicine refers to something completely different than what we know as conventional medicine or the standard model of health care. Despite great advances in medicine, complex chronic diseases continue to prevail. To fully understand what functional medicine is, it is important to contrast to conventional medicine.
Traditionally a medical practitioner uses drugs or hormones as a therapeutic tool to deal with dysfunction or disease. For many conditions including low thyroid, diabetes, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol, the standard model of care and basic tool is almost always a medication. The training in conventional medicine is to diagnose a disease and match that disease with a corresponding drug. This model works well for acute diseases, trauma, infection and emergencies – but sadly, it is failing miserably in the care of chronic diseases that affect millions of Americans.
Functional medicine is patient-centered care rather than disease-focused treatment. It is deeply science-based medicine that links years of research in the basic sciences (how the body works) with newer options in clinical practice to offer safe, effective treatment of complex chronic conditions. It goes back to the basics of evaluating organ function rather than organ pathology. Functional medicine focuses on processes, the environmental inputs, and the genic predispositions that influence health and disease so that interventions are focused on treating the cause of the problem, not just the symptoms. It focuses on restoring balance to a dysfunctional system by thoroughly investigating and correcting underlying imbalances. Functional medicine does not mask the symptoms of a disease; rather it treats the underlying causes.
Functional medicine is personalized health care which treats the individual and supports the normal healing mechanisms of the body, naturally, rather than attacking disease directly. The clear difference and definition of functional medicine is instead of asking “what drug matches up with this disease?” Functional medicine asks, “Why do you have this problem in the first place?” and “Why has function been lost?” and “What can we do to restore function?”  It takes a holistic approach looking for patterns and connections in the imbalances and investigating – “Does this person need to be rid of something (toxins, allergens, infections, poor diet, stress)?” and “Does this person have some unmet individual need required for optimal function?”
Functional medicine engages both the patient and practitioner in a science-based personalized approach to promote health as a positive vitality, not merely the absence of disease.  A functional medicine practitioner considers ‘body systems and balance – remove what causes imbalance and provide what creates balance’… then disease goes away as a “side effect” of health!
For more information, please call Compassionate Healthcare Associates at 661-295-7777.