How can Functional Medicine help you?
What is functional medicine?
Functional Medicine is a systems-orientated approach that looks at determining and addressing the root causes of ill health. This means a diagnosis may be comprised of many components which collectively result in a set of symptoms. For example, a patient may present with widespread musculoskeletal pain (such as in fibromyalgia). At the core of this issue may be inflammation but it may be driven by many different things such as poor diet and lifestyle (leading to nutrient deficiency), toxicity, mould, trauma, etc. By looking at the body this way, Functional Medicine aims to consider multiple factors that may be causing our health problems, that potentially require us to address both our internal and external environment in order to regain our health and wellbeing.
Making medicine personal
The Functional Medicine approach inevitably requires a personalised approach to treatment put together a unique treatment plan. This requires the practitioner to understand the patient’s detailed history, taking into account genetics, environment, and lifestyle as well as all health ups and downs to elicit a clear picture as to why the problems have arisen. Thus it is a holistic model that doesn’t simply look at a set of symptoms.
How is Functional Medicine different from conventional medicine?
Conventional medicine tends to focus on a set of symptoms leading to a diagnosis, and then treating this, most often, with drug based therapies (that typically are taken long-term). The focus here is on treating a disease. In Functional Medicine, the practitioner is more interested in what has caused the patient to present with their particular constellation of symptoms. Unlike the conventional medicine approach, this means considering that a similar collection of symptoms in two different patients may have differing underlying causes. Rather than focussing on treating the disease, Functional Medicine’s goal is to restore health and vitality by using treatments such as lifestyle interventions and supplementation. This means prevention and promoting health are the key goals to make sustainable and lasting changes, rather than suppressing symptoms.
How did Functional Medicine come about?
The Institute of Functional Medicine was set up in 1991 but Jeffrey Bland, originally a biochemist who specialised in nutritional biochemistry and was instrumental in the development of many nutritional foods through his company HealthComm International. The goal of Functional Medicine was to provide a framework for practitioners to address metabolic factors underlying chronic diseases. This understanding grew as science began to challenge the belief that once we deciphered the human genome we would be able to answer all the questions about the origin of disease. In reality, scientists discovered that human biology is infinitely complex. Our gene expression is altered by many different factors: our environment, diet, lifestyle, exercise or lack of, stress, emotional issues amongst other things. By addressing these and other factors, Functional Medicine aims to restore health by turning on (or off) certain genes.
What are the key principles of Functional Medicine?
Personalised health care: The treatment is tailored to the an individual’s values, preferences and needs
Quality of life as well as longevity: Ongoing chronic illness can severely affect our quality of life and heavily influence whether we are able to do the things that we love
Holistic approach: Considers all aspects of health: mind, body and spirit
Focus on health and wellbeing: Good health is not merely the absence of symptoms or disease but a foundational wellbeing that allows us to flourish and fulfil our potential
Systems approach: All the systems of the body (e.g. cardiovascular, immune, etc.) are interconnected and it is vital we consider the interplay between these systems if we are to understand why a loss of health has occurred
Unique genetics and environment: Functional Medicine recognises that we all have a unique genetic profile and our environmental exposure is also unique
Who practices Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine is used by a variety of healthcare practitioners including GPs, Naturopaths, Chiropractors, and Osteopaths. As a result there may be variations in the way these principles are applied but the framework used is essentially the same.
If would like to know more about how I practice Functional Medicine and what it might do for you as an approach to your health and wellbeing please email jonny@foundationforlife.co.uk or call 07958 569471 to arrange a free, no-obligation phone consultation. I look forward to hearing from you!