What Is it?

Functional medicine; what is it? Why should I consider it for my healthcare needs? These may be questions that you have, and they are good ones!

The Institute for Functional Medicine defines it as “a systems biology–based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or differential diagnosis may be one of many contributing to an individual’s illness.” 

To put it in a different way; functional medicine acknowledges that illness and disease does not occur in a vacuum. Functional medicine does not treat symptoms but instead seeks to address the individual as a whole and get to the root cause of the disease and to treat that. It looks at the why instead of just at the what, like a traditional medical approach tends to.

A functional medicine approach will take into account a detailed history of your health and look at things like your diet, genetic history, environmental, and lifestyle factors. A functional medicine practitioner focuses on you as a whole person.

Why Choose It?

You may notice one thing coming up again and again in the description of what functional medicine is; the focus on YOU. A functional medicine practitioner views themselves as being in a partnership with you, they spend time listening to you and considering every aspect of your life and working with you through various health and healing techniques to get to the root cause and to improve your quality of life and restore your health and strength. In short; it is all about YOU.

Functional medicine is a great choice for you if you have been suffering from chronic disease that has been misdiagnosed and mistreated, if you have seen specialist after specialist and been diagnosed with different things and had tons of treatments thrown at you with no success, or had treatments that worked briefly, but had relapses. 

If you have ever gone to a doctor, frustrated about a chronic issue or suffering from a list of symptoms with no definitive source and been dismissed or had them rush to a diagnosis or throw some medication at you — you will really appreciate a functional medicine approach. It can be extremely frustrating, exhausting, and heartbreaking to be dismissed, overlooked, and neglected by the medical community — and if this has been your experience, then you might consider finding a functional medicine practitioner. 

If you are looking for a functional medicine practitioner or want to work one on one with a functional medicine certified health coach to help you navigate chronic Lyme disease or tick borne illness, I can help. Book a consult call with me.