Our functional medicine team uses a holistic approach to treating chronic diseases, with a focus on nutrition, adrenal disorders, Alzheimer's disease and dementia, arthritis, asthma, autoimmune diseases, cancer prevention, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Functional medicine is a systems biology-based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or differential diagnosis can be one of many that contribute to a person's illness. Compound medicine is a term used in functional medicine to refer to a single, personalized prescription treatment.
Functional medicine allows you and your doctor to examine symptoms to establish the affected systems in your body. Functional medicine can help correct an imbalance of substances within the body that may have occurred as a result of illness, medications, or environmental or lifestyle factors. The holistic, individualized approach to functional medicine is ideal for treating sneaky pathogens, as symptoms tend to “move”. The most up-to-date genetic scientific research is used in functional medicine to develop a patient-specific wellness plan.
All doctors take the patient's medical history, but what makes the functional medicine timeline different is that it has the effect of giving the patient insight into past life events to motivate them to change and participate in treatment. In contrast, conventional medicine often uses an orthodox model of care that works to diagnose a patient's symptoms and then combine them with a corresponding standard medication or treatment without necessarily looking for the root cause of the patient's medical problem. Functional medicine is a personalized and inclusive approach to healthcare that involves understanding the prevention, management, and root causes of complex chronic diseases. The ultimate goal is to cure the disease and promote a healthy life.
Functional medicine takes the approach that each person is unique, both genetically and biochemically, and therefore one drug or treatment doesn't work for everyone. A physician in functional medicine works holistically, considering the full picture of your physical, mental, emotional, and sometimes even spiritual health. When treating a chronic illness, functional professionals recognize the patient's biochemical individuality and involve patients in their health care plan. The Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM) provides “clinical foci for several functional physicians.
Conventional medicine primarily recognizes the symptoms you experience and uses the same symptoms to identify a disease and develop a treatment plan. The functional medicine physician integrates traditional Western medical practices with other types of medical approaches from around the world.
