Integrated Functional Medicine
If you want to take an active role in your health care, functional medicine may be of interest to you.
Functional medicine is a union between naturopathy and conventional medicine. It is a health care practice that encourages patients to reach or return to optimal health and improve vitality. Integrated functional medicine zones in on the causes behind diseases, and then addresses those causes.
This is an individual experience for each patient because biology and lifestyle are taken into consideration. With that, functional medicine is not geared towards diseases per se; rather it focuses on the patient as a “whole person.” This is why functional medicine has an approach known as “patient-centered.” Functional medicine consists of practitioners and patients working together to tackle the causes of disease. When the patient becomes educated on how their body works, this may trigger a drive to follow through health plans.
Practitioners take the time to listen to each patient’s health concerns in full detail. Discussions on family health history will occur and how genes, lifestyle, and environmental surroundings may affect chronic disease and long-term health.
Therefore, one of the main goals of functional medicine is to understand what is not functional within one individual; not within a group of people with the same disease yet different family histories and ways of living.
