What is Functional Medicine?
What is Functional Medicine
What is Functional Medicine?
The term “functional medicine” was coined in 1993 to
describe the medicine of the future.1 In fact, today, many complementary
and alternative medicine, or CAM, practitioners use a functional medicine
approach that includes the following:
1.Patient
uniqueness: Each individual is unique. This
uniqueness encompasses voluntary activities, such as decision-making,
personality development, and emotional response, and involuntary activities
like metabolism of nutrients, cellular processing of information, and
communication among the body’s organ systems. Functional medicine professionals
realize that all individuals have unique metabolic patterns that affect their
health needs and thus, the concept of individuality is central to every aspect
of functional medicine, from clinical assessment and diagnosis to the broad
spectrum of treatment modalities.
Patient-centered
approach: Functional medicine practitioners use a patient-centered
approach to support wellness. This means that in addition to considering
the overall health of the patient, functional medicine practitioners
consider the beliefs, attitudes, and motivations, as well as the physical,
mental, and emotional aspects, of the patient.
Preventive
care: Optimal health is not just the absence of disease. Even the most
minor symptoms can foreshadow more serious conditions later in life. This
often happens via the “snowball effect,” in which a “minor” imbalance
within the body produces a cascade of biological triggers that can eventually
lead to poor health and chronic illness. For this reason, functional
medicine focuses on the prevention, instead of just the treatment of, even
the most minor imbalances.2
Through changes in lifestyle, environment, and nutrition,
functional medicine professionals rely on their knowledge of key physiological,
genetic, and biochemical processes for establishing an innovative form of total
patient wellness amidst the diversity of interests in health care today.1
