functional medicine - what it is and how it differs from traditional medicine

Functional Medicine is a paradigm of medicine that effectively addresses the needs of those who are seeking health transformation. It is capable of restoring and maintaining optimal health in an individual, family system, or community.

It is different from traditional medicine in four ways:

  1. Functional Medicine seeks to understand the totality of the person including their habits, environment, genetics, and goals. Traditional medicine tends to isolate the focus of the search for a particular disease within one system, such as the immune system, or the digestive system.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
  2. The highest form of functional medicine offers a considerable degree of collaboration between the patient and physician. It is essential that this relationship is built on trust, transparency, shared goals, and mutual commitment to one another in order to achieve the desired health goals. The physician and patient partner together to review and understand all of the factors that have led to a patient’s ill health including a detailed exploration of a patient’s health history, diet, genetics, environmental, and lifestyle habits. As the patient commits to significant and difficult life changes, the physician and functional medicine health team commit extensive time, compassion, and education in order to implement and help sustain changes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
  3. Functional Medicine is concerned with the WHY question. Patients want to know “Why can’t I lose weight?” or “Why does my stomach hurt after every meal?” Traditional medical training does not teach doctors to answer the WHY question but rather the WHAT question, “What is the label or diagnosis for my condition?” The pursuit of a diagnosis for a particular condition can be a distraction or even a red herring when compared to the pursuit of cofactors involved in the development of a particular disease or condition. Unfortunately, the current medical mindset is stuck in the pharmaceutical model. For example, clinical studies are often aimed at proving a one-cause, one-cure solution (often pharmaceutical) for any given ailment. Functional medicine recognizes that there are multiple factors involved in the derailment of normal physiology that lead to a recognizable disease. It is the pursuit of the cofactors involved in the evolution of the disease process that provide multiple points of intervention to reverse the condition and restore physiology for optimal health.                                                                               
  4. Functional medicine believes a person’s physiology and health can be restored even after it is lost. For instance, autoimmune conditions such as Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism can be reversed through the reduction of inflammation and restoration of repair processes within a person’s body. Conventional medicine is aimed at minimizing symptoms or slowing the progression of disease. Consequently, the standard of care for a Hashimoto’s diagnosis through an endocrinology office provides only prescriptive thyroid hormones with little to no consideration given to the fact that the patient is now more likely to develop a second or even third autoimmune condition. This leaves a patient alone to search for “WHY” they developed this condition in the first place.

How does it work?

Functional Medicine assesses and restores function to The Key Pillars of Health including:

  • Immune function
  • Digestion and absorption
  • Hormone balance and stress responsiveness
  • Detoxification capacity
  • Sleep and tissue repair
  • Nutrient status

Diagnostic tools include:

  • Lifestyle assessments – to identify other habits such as exercise, sleep, and vocation that promote or take away from a patient’s health
  • Laboratory tests – to assess each of the key pillars of health and define where there may be cracks in the pillars
  • Food journals – to gather information on the most powerful habit that restores or destroys human health

Therapeutic interventions include:

  • Patient education and coaching –  alone or in groups, to offer a better understanding of lifestyle factors that impede progress towards health goals, and empower patients to make the most effective changes in their health recovery
  • Nutritional supplementation –  by mouth or intravenous infusion, to replace nutrient deficits such as magnesium, Vitamin C, glutathione, neurotransmitter levels like serotonin or GABA, and to repair tissues such as intestinal epithelium and bone mineral density
  • Prescriptive treatment – when indicated, to remove “roadblocks” that prevent the body from restoring normal physiologic function. For example, an antibiotic to eradicate Clostridium difficile from the G.I. tract
  • Dietary changes –  often to reduce inflammatory foods or improve glycemic habits

Who can benefit from Functional Medicine?

Functional Medicine allows someone who is “stuck” or even imprisoned by some aspect of their life, to regain freedom of mobility, vitality, and functionality. Functional medicine is for those who believe that the way we eat, sleep, move, recreate, and work can determine our degree of health. It is for those who are willing to make the difficult changes in their diet and lifestyle in order to affect health and life transformation. From the athlete seeking to perform at their highest level to the individual seeking to gain back their health, functional medicine is able to restore optimal wellness.