What is Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine is a medical practice or treatments that focus on optimal functioning.
Many patients who seek medical care DO NOT have a clinically identifiable disease or pathology! Their problems are based in what we call “derangements or blockages in normal physiology”. These dysfunction(s) in one or more organ system(s), if left unchecked, would ultimately lead to disease and pathology.
We have heard countless times that everything “looks normal” based on the standard tests routinely run by their primary care doctor (physical examination, urinalysis, blood tests etc.). Yet, everything “doesn’t feel right”, and in fact you feel far from normal!
Functional medicine practitioners know that most of our patients are by no means “normal”, but are a long way from being in a state of optimal health.
So why do we use and rely diagnostic techniques and standard interpretations that are designed to identify disease states and pathology only?
Shouldn’t we use interpretative and diagnostic methods that can help us assess a wide range of problems that are more suggestive of sub-clinical or functional problems?
Many patients fall through the cracks of the current medical paradigm because they are neither sick from a pathological perspective (no tissue changes, no findings on diagnostic testing etc.) nor 100% well. These patients fall into a gray area of medicine and we need a different approach to be able to deal with this.
In our office, we listen to the “whole story” a patient has to tell us. We would call ourselves “modern day health detectives”. We leave no stone unturned. We delve deep into diet, or lack of proper diet, proper supplementation, herbal therapy, exercise habits, mental + emotional stressors, and so much more! Ultimately, to treat the patient living today in our modern times, we as practitioners have to remain steadfast and provide traditional healing techniques blended with contemporary science that get to the root cause of the issues at hand!
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