What is Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine is the specialty of medicine that looks for WHY GET SICK. It searches for and treats the underlying cause of early symptoms rather than waiting for disease to develop. This is vastly different than waiting for and treating the symptoms that are associated with overt disease. By taking this approach, we can identify where the altered physiology is, help restore early dysfunction and ultimately prevent the progression to frank disease. This is truly preventive medicine.
So often we are told, “all of your labs look normal so you are good” but we don’t feel “good”. Health is NOT lack of disease and RULING OUT disease doesn’t necessarily RULE IN good health. Functional medicine can help identify what those symptom “clues” are trying to tell you about what is going on in your body.
Functional Medicine is patient centered and takes into consideration individual medical history, lifestyle choices, environmental exposures, relationships and genetics. It requires the patient to be actively involved in their health and invested in getting better. It encourages healthy lifestyle choices so that disease doesn’t have a chance to take hold.
Functional Medicine uses both traditional medicine and integrative therapies. These integrative or alternative therapies can be long standing and time tested such as herbal therapy or cutting edge medicine such as peptides and stem cells. This simply gives functional medicine practitioners more tools in their toolbox.
We are each unique individuals with different abilities to handle insults based on our current health, genetic makeup and lifestyle choices. We are more than a liver or a set of kidneys or a brain. All of our body systems work in a harmony. When one system gets out of balance it will have an effect on the other body systems. Early dysfunction in our body results in certain clinical patterns that give us clues to what is going on inside our body. The Functional Medicine practitioner hears the patient’s story, organizes their symptoms, labs and other diagnostic clues and figures out how they fit together. Once we have an idea of what is causing the symptoms the solution becomes clear.
There appears to be about 8 main contributors to the development of disease. These include: hormone imbalances, GUT problems, chronic stress, undiagnosed infections, nutritional deficiencies, lack of sunlight and connection to the earth, lack of movement and environmental toxins. These disease promotors led to mitochondrial problems, inflammation and low cellular energy. If we can address these major contributors early, we may thwart the development of disease.​​
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Treatable Conditions:
• Hormone imbalances (men and women): PMS, PMDD, Perimenopause, Menopause, Low Testosterone in males, PCOS, infertility
• Fatigue, Insomnia, Headaches
• Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Memory Loss
• Chronic Infections (Lyme’s disease, Parasites, Epstein Barr, Mold)
• Gastrointestinal Problems & Food Sensitivities
• Thyroid Dysfunction (Low thyroid, Hashimotos)
• Diabetes/ Prediabetes, Elevated Cholesterol, Hypertension
• Weight Gain (or the inability to gain or lose weight)
• Environmental Toxins including Mold toxins, heavy metals
• Autoimmunity
Therapies:
• Bio-identical Hormone therapy (Sex hormones, Thyroid hormones)
• Detoxification (Diet only, Medical Foods and Intracellular programs)
• Heavy Metal & Mold Detoxification programs
• Physician guided Weight Loss Program and Nutrition plans (with and without GLP-1’s)
• Physician guided nutraceutical supplementation & botanical/ herbal therapies
• GUT treatments: Yeast Overgrowth, SIBO, Dysbiosis, GI infections and Leaky GUT
• Adrenal Dysfunction (“Adrenal Fatigue” and Chronic Stress)
• Energy Medicine and Frequency Medicine
• Peptides and Stem Cells
• Traditional pharmaceuticals (medication) if required
Specialized Testing:
• Urine hormone levels (sex hormones, stress hormones)
• Full Thyroid blood evaluation: FT3, FT4, TSH, thyroid antibodies and Reverse T3
• Food Sensitivity, Nutritional and Inflammatory testing,
• Comprehensive Gastrointestinal testing
• Organic acid and Fatty Acid testing
• Environmental Toxin Testing: Heavy Metals, Mold Toxins,
• Chronic infections (Lyme’s Disease, Long COVID, Parasites)
• Cellular/Foundational Energy Testing (Heart Rate variability, DePuls)
• Frequency/Bioresonance Testing
• Genetic Testing
In order to slow the explosion of chronic disease that we are seeing in our country, we need to stop treating each disease as an isolated event and begin to treat the patient as a whole and unique person. Functional Medicine looks upstream for the physiological mechanisms that underlie disease and looks beyond traditional treatments to help you be your healthiest self.
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