Working With a Functional Medicine Practitioner

Functional medicine (FM) practitioners address the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. These practitioners spend an extended amount of time with their patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions between environmental, lifestyle, and genetic factors that influence health. FM practitioners will consider multiple factors.

  • Environmental inputs: The air you breathe and the WATER you drink, the particular diet you eat, the QUALITY of the food available to you, your level of physical activity, and toxic exposures or traumas you have experienced all affect your health.
  • Mind-body connections: Psychological, spiritual, and social factors can all have a profound influence on your health. Considering these areas helps the FM practitioner see your health in the context of you as a whole person, not just your physical symptoms.

Example: Stress not only affects your daily mood and sleep patterns, but also affects certain hormones in your body. The effects of stress on these particular hormones may be the actual root of your chronic fatigue, hair loss, weight gain or loss, etc. Once we have discovered the root cause of the issue, we will formulate a specialized plan based on your needs that will meet you where you are and assist with implementing change at YOUR speed. Creating an effective, long-term, lifestyle change over TEMPORARY relief.

  • Genetic makeup: Although individual genes may make you more susceptible to some diseases, your DNA is not an unchanging blueprint for your life. Emerging research shows that your genes may be influenced by everything in your environment, as well as your experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. That means it is possible to change the way genes are activated and expressed.

Understanding the genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors unique to each person, an FM practitioner is able to identify which bodily processes are affected. Some occur at the cellular level and involve how cells function, repair, and maintain themselves. Others are related to how your body processes and uses nutrients. Any of these processes can become imbalanced or disrupted, which can cause or accelerate symptoms and disease.

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Comprehensive Approach to Treatment

Most imbalanced processes can be addressed to restore or substantially improve a person's health.

  • Prevention is paramount: Virtually every complex, chronic disease is preceded by long-term disturbances in functionality that can be identified and effectively managed.
  • Changing how the systems function can have a major impact on the patient's health. The Functional Medicine (FM) practitioner examines a wide array of available interventions and customizes a treatment plan, including those with the most impact on your health.
  • Functional Medicine expands the clinician's tool kit. Treatments may include combinations of drugs, botanical medicines, nutritional supplements, therapeutic diets, or detoxification programs. They may also include counseling on lifestyle, exercise, or stress-management techniques.
  • The potential becomes a partner. As a patient, you become an active partner with your FM practitioner. Such a partnership allows you to be in charge of improving your own health and changing the outcome of disease.

What is Functional Nutrition

FM emphasizes the importance of high-quality foods and phytonutrient diversity to address clinical imbalances and move individuals toward the highest expression of health. Advanced nutrition assessment and a thorough FM-based history lead to a personalized therapeutic intervention created to promote optimal health and prevent diet-and lifestyle-related disease.

Nutrition is the core modality of Functional Medicine, an integrative approach to health. As defined by The Institute of Functional Medicine, "FM is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach. FM supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual.