What is Functional Medicine?
Functional medicine is personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes instead of symptoms for serious chronic disease. In other words: we look for the root cause of disease, connecting symptoms with bodily systems. It is a science-based field of health care that is grounded in the following principles:
- Biochemical individuality – One person’s optimum health is not another’s.
- Patient-centered, emphasis on “patient care” rather than “disease care,” – we treat more than your symptoms
- Dynamic balance of internal and external factors – emotional and environmental health is critically considered
- Web-like interconnections of physiological factors. The body functions as an orchestrated network of interconnected systems, rather than autonomous systems functioning individually and without effect on each other – gut > brain, brain > gut, for example
- Health as a positive vitality, not merely the absence of disease
- Promotion of organ reserve as the means to enhance health span
We look at the underlying causes of disease, rather than focusing on the “name it”, then “tame it” game of modern medicine. These imbalances may consist of one or many of the following:
- Hormonal and neurotransmitter imbalances
- Detoxification imbalances
- Energy or metabolic imbalances
- Immune imbalances
- Inflammatory imbalances
- Digestive, absorptive and microbiological imbalances
- Structural imbalances from cellular membrane function to the musculoskeletal system – whether you can move freely greatly impacts your health
Our functional medicine practice uses the patient’s story as a key tool for integrating diagnosis, signs and symptoms, and evidence of clinical imbalances into a comprehensive approach to improve both the patient’s symptoms and their physiological function. We use functional medicine, clinical nutrition, functional neurology, neurofeedback, and various therapies including PeMF to address the entire body and find balance.
