Functional Diagnostic Nutrition is the equivalent of having a whole community of medical detectives uncovering evidence helping to explain what it is about your diet, lifestyle, genetics, exposure to toxins, hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, drug depletion of essential nutrients, emotional stressors, infections, dysfunction of your body’s physiology, excess or deficiency of brain chemicals, structural imbalances of your body, and more have contributed to your current health complaints and medical diagnoses of illnesses your physicians may have given you.
This is very different from mainstream, pharmaceutical medicine that is driven by the “one pill for each ill” paradigm. Give a drug or recommend a procedure to address your symptoms. That model, which is the insurance based model that has a strangle hold on your health choices and reimbursements attempts to “cure” one thing that fixes the symptom.
There is an inherent flaw in this way of thinking because it assumes that any health problem has one cause.
Symptoms are Signals
Unlike the disease-specific approach which is geared to suppress the expression of symptoms, physicians practicing functional diagnostic medicine are delighted to discover that many diseases have a real underlying cause which when identified and corrected can have a dramatic impact on the health of their patients.
Clinicians practicing functional diagnostic medicine are able to identify underlying causes of many health conditions by uniquely designed questionnaires, years of specialized training, utilization of assays and tests that seek to identify reasons for root causes and not simply surface symptoms. These are not your standard medical tests. These tests have been designed by researchers and scientists from the finest universities and innovative, licensed laboratories. They expand the boundaries of inquiry to include investigation of the biochemical and metabolic glitches likely to cause a specific disease process. Based on the results of these tests, physicians are then able to develop personalized, patient-specific treatment protocols designed to reverse, stop or prevent the disease and its related symptoms.
The Missed Diagnosis
Some health professionals typically interpret symptoms as indicators of a specific illness and use diagnostic assessments to identify or confirm that condition. While perhaps validating a suspected disease process, this approach often fails to identify the real roots of the condition – – especially in cases of chronic illness. Most treatments based upon this approach tend to be heavily dependent upon pharmaceutical drugs. Again, this approach does not address the underlying cause of the condition. Further, many drugs have toxic side effects and cover up symptoms, making additional attempts at diagnosis even less reliable.
Functional Medicine is Personalized Medicine That Brings Hope and Help
Functional Medicine practitioners are particularly good at addressing the needs of those suffering from incorrectly or partially diagnosed chronic health problems which, in many cases, have yet to manifest as a specific disease. In so many cases, patients have gone from doctor to doctor for months or years without getting the relief they seek. Functional Medicine brings hope to those who may have begun to feel hopeless or helpless. Treatments emphasize natural approaches, diet and exercise, specialized use of nutritional supplements, herbs (botanical medicine), homeopathy, and lifestyle coaching.
In addition to analyzing traditional lab tests for clues to underlying factors contributing to your health complaints, practitioners who have been trained in Functional Medicine have also been trained in the use of lab tests not often recommended by traditional, pharmaceutically oriented doctors. These lab test options are offered by laboratories that are credentialed at the highest level – – the very same authorities that credential hospital and private labs your doctors send you to for their tests. Options like these will be offered to you if I think that they will help me find clues to why a certain condition has developed or has not been relieved.
Functional Medicine Practitioners Customize Healthcare
Once you’re labeled with a disease in mainstream medicine, you’re given the same medications everyone else with that disease is given. This cookie cutter approach works sometimes, but more often than not, it fails miserably. Functional medicine takes into account that we’re all designed a little differently, so what works for one person isn’t necessarily best for you. A tailored, comprehensive health program addresses you as the unique individual that you are.
Functional Medicine Practitioners Spend More One-on-One Time with Patients
Mainstream medicine is really bogged down with symptom care. That is why every six months you typically wait an hour at your doctor’s office for a five-minute visit. This system is failing millions of Americans suffering from chronic health conditions. In terms of crisis care, emergencies and surgeries, we have one of the best health care systems in the world, but when it comes to chronic health care the United States is one of the worst industrialized health care systems in the world.
