

It may be so that Functional Medicine is an area of specialty itself. So then, what is a Functional Medicine doctor? Job Role of a Functional Doctor or a Functional Medicine PractitionerĪ Functional Medicine doctor’s job is to restore their patient’s normal physiology and normal body function instead of focusing on treating specific illnesses because if the normal body functions are restored, it will clear up most of the disease processes.

In the US, 42% of the hospitals offer their patients a form of integrative medical care, which includes functional medicine.

The Functional Medicine doctor focuses on the prevention of the disease through the following ways: Functional Medicine Practitioner – Overviewįunctional Medicine Practitioner – Background What is Functional Medicine? It is a healthcare approach that is integrative, based on scientific facts, and is patient-centered. The only treatments which can address the right cause will have benefits that will last beyond just the suppression of symptoms. The specific manifestation of each cause is dependent on the person’s genes, environment, and lifestyle. In the same way, a cause such as inflammation can lead up to a number of different diagnoses, which can include depression. Just like different diagnoses or each symptom faced by the patient can be one out of many contributing factors for their illness, only one diagnosis of the patient can be the result of more than one cause.įor instance, the result of depression can be caused by many different factors, which may include inflammation. The Functional Medicine model focuses on identifying and addressing the disease’s root cause with its systems biology-based approach. Understanding the patient in the context.

Elements of the Functional Medicine Modelįunctional Medicine Model: Functional Medicine’s knowledge base or its footprint is shaped by the following six-core foundations: Functional medicine practitioners use modalities such as nutrigenomics – which can tell about a person’s relation between nutrients and their genes, pathophysiology, and biochemistry to optimize the body’s function, which is why it’s a truly holistic approach. This is based on their intrinsic functionality, which is their genetic vulnerabilities, that can influence the disease’s development or the maintenance of the patient’s health. In the case of every patient, they represent their own unique, complex, and interwoven set of environmental and lifestyle influences. In order to restore a patient’s health, it requires the reversal or the improvement in specific dysfunctions that may contribute to the state of their illness/condition. The chronic disease is always preceded by a period of declining functions in one or more of the body’s systems, which is why Functional Medicine is described as the clinical application of systems biology. It helps doctors to better understand and work to improve the dysfunctions in the physiology and biochemistry of the patient’s body as its fundamental method of improving their condition. They work together with all the components of the human biological system to interact dynamically with the environment and produce patterns or effects which can change over a period of time. This new approach to healthcare puts the concept forward where health and illness are part of a continuum. To explain the concept of what is Functional Medicine even further, Functional Medicine doctors ask the patient, how and why their illness occurs and restores their health by addressing these root causes of their diseases, which is different for each individual. What is Functional Medicine? According to IFM, which stands for the Institute for Functional Medicine, the functional medicine model is, “an individualized, patient-centered, science-based approach, that empowers patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease and promote optimal wellness.”
