Functional Medicine: Why It’s Different

Over the past century, conventional medicine has seen incredible advancements in medical technology and innovative treatments. Countless lives have been saved as a result, particularly in the face of acute trauma, injuries, and infections.

On the other hand, we have grown accustomed to simply medicating symptoms in conventional medicine, and not exploring what might be driving the symptoms behind the scenes. 

This is where functional medicine comes in.

A functional medicine practitioner is trained to do a deep dive on the human body as a whole. By examining the body’s ecosystem - from the gut, brain, hormones to the immune system - we start to see how they are all interconnected. Furthermore, we can begin to understand that symptoms are the body’s way to signaling that there is a malfunction within the ecosystem.

By running comprehensive diagnostic testing via blood, urine, and saliva panels, functional medicine practitioners can gather data on the current state of the body’s organs and pathways. This step is crucial in knowing how to address the underlying cause of symptoms, rather than simply alleviating them temporarily with medication.

Treatment plans tend to be comprehensive in functional medicine - by addressing nutrient deficiencies, to immunological sensitivities to external factors such as food and chemicals, as well as reviewing lifestyle and environmental factors that can be stressing the body out, practitioners may prescribe medication, dietary supplements, and behavioral changes in day-to-day habits like exercise and stress management.

When you try to put together a jigsaw puzzle, you want to see the big picture first in order to know where to put the pieces, right? Functional medicine approaches the human body in the same way. It’s not just about the pieces, but about the entire puzzle.