Transform Your Health Functional Medicine to the Rescue

The term Functional Medicine refers to something completely different than what we know as conventional medicine or the standard model of health care. Despite significant advances in medicine, complex chronic diseases continue to increase in our society. To fully understand what functional medicine is, it is important to contrast it to conventional medicine.
Traditionally a medical practitioner uses drugs or hormones as a therapeutic tool to deal with a health condition or disease. For many conditions, including low thyroid, diabetes, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol, the standard model of care and the primary 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 illnesses, trauma, infection, and emergencies – but sadly, it is failing miserably in the care of chronic diseases that affect millions of Americans.  
Functional medicine focuses on caring for the whole person rather than disease-focused treatments. It is rooted in the basic sciences and focuses on a deep understanding of how the body works (functions) by evaluating organ function rather than organ pathology. Functional medicine focuses on a person’s lifestyle behaviors, environmental exposures, and their genetic risks to understand how the individual is expressing health and disease. Interventions are focused on treating the cause(s) of complex chronic conditions, not just the symptoms. The goal of functional medicine is NOT to mask the symptoms of a disease; instead, it treats the underlying causes of the condition through restoring balance to the body.
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. “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 and support the normal healing mechanisms of the body, naturally.
A functional medicine practitioner considers ‘body systems and balance – removes what is causing the imbalance and provide what creates balance’.
For more information, call Compassionate Healthcare Associates: 661.295.7777.