Functional Medicine is a science-based, natural way to become healthy again. Functional Medicine is patient-centered healing at its best. Instead of looking at and treating health problems as isolated diseases, it restores the natural functioning of the patient’s body and mind as a whole.

Particular diseases might be visible above the surface. Still, according to Functional Medicine, their causes are found in the altered physiology below the surface where the real causes of a patient's health problems lie. Identifying and treating the underlying root causes, as Functional Medicine does, has a much better chance of successfully resolving a patient's health challenge.

Using scientific principles, advanced diagnostic testing, and treatments other than drugs or surgery, Functional Medicine restores balance in the body's primary physiological processes. The goal is the patient's lifelong optimal health.

How Functional Medicine Works

To battle chronic health conditions, Functional Medicine uses two scientifically grounded principles:

1. Add what's lacking in the body to nudge its physiology back to a state of optimal functioning.

2. Remove anything that impedes the body from moving toward this optimal state of physiology. Your body naturally wants to be healthy. But things needed by the body to function at their best might be missing, or something might be standing in the way of its best functioning. Functional Medicine first identifies the factors responsible for the malfunctioning. Then it deals with those factors in a way appropriate to the patient's particular situation.

Functional medicine practitioners often use advanced laboratory testing to identify the root cause or causes of the patient's health problem. Old-fashioned medical diagnosis helps, too, in the form of listening carefully to the patient's history of symptoms and asking questions about his or her activities and lifestyle. For treatment, Functional Medicine practitioners use a combination of natural agents (supplements, herbs, nutraceuticals, and homeopathics), nutritional and lifestyle changes, spiritual/emotional counseling, and pharmaceuticals, if necessary, to prod a patient's physiology back to an optimal state. In addition, educating the patient about their condition empowers them to take charge of their health, ultimately leading to greater success in treatment.

Restoring Natural Functioning versus Trying to Get Rid of Symptoms

In the dominant healthcare model today, medication eliminates people's symptoms. If the patient stops taking the medication, symptoms generally return. Functional Medicine approaches health problems differently. Instead of masking the problem, it aims at restoring the body's natural functioning.

We attempt to nurture you back to health with powerful food-based supplements, herbal extracts, and therapeutic-grade essential oils. For example, conventional doctors normally prescribe pharmaceuticals like Prilosec, Prevacid, or Aciphex to treat acid reflux or heartburn. When the patient stops taking such drugs, the heartburn symptoms come back. In contrast, a Functional Medicine practitioner might find that Helicobacter pylori bacteria cause a patient's acid reflux. Eradicating Helicobacter pylori might very well lead to the end of heartburn symptoms permanently.

It's also important to note that in Functional Medicine, treatment for similar symptoms might vary tremendously for different patients, according to their medical history and results of laboratory tests. Factors that can produce the same symptoms include toxic chemicals, pathogenic bacteria, parasites, chronic viral pathogens, unresolved emotions like anger, greed, or envy, and structural factors.

The Roots of Functional Medicine

You may be surprised to learn that Functional Medicine isn't new. It represents a return to the roots of modern scientific medicine, captured in this statement by Sir William Osler, one of the first professors at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and later its Physician-in-Chief:

"The good physician treats the disease;
the great physician treats the patient who has the disease."