What are the benefits of functional medicine?

The real benefit of functional medicine is health-centered care. Functional medicine creates a personalized health plan. Functional medicine diagnoses and treats core disorders rather than minimizing symptoms. A central element of all this are the often overlooked aspects of internal factors (mind, body and spirit) and external factors (physical and social environment) that are vital to evaluating the optimal functioning of the individual.

Older adults are more likely than younger people to have complex health problems and conditions, all of which can be addressed by a functioning doctor. And in my practice and in my teaching programs I see advances and results that encourage me to stay in the “Pro Functional Medicine” camp. The functional medicine approach is different for each person, as each treatment is tailored to that person's specific disease. Taking supplements, initiating dietary changes, and the complexity of many functional medicine treatments put people off.

The other problem facing functional medicine that is likely to slow its growth more than anything is the fact that it is so inexpensive to troubleshoot with the use of functional medicine that it goes against traditional health care benefit centers of selling pharmaceuticals and performing costly medical procedures, such as surgeries. The functional medicine physician integrates traditional Western medical practices with other types of medical approaches from around the world. Your relationship with a functional medicine doctor may also be different from that of your primary care doctor. Functional medicine is philosophically similar to traditional Chinese medicine, but it often uses laboratory tests to identify certain deficits or imbalances using chemical (laboratory) analysis.

If you're looking for a new approach to treating your health conditions, consider consulting a functional medicine doctor. The following article will present a more detailed explanation of the basics, applications, and benefits of functional medicine to help you understand the importance of such an approach.

Functional physicians

work across multiple disciplines to gain a detailed understanding of what is happening in the body.

functional medicine physicians

decide to specialize in functional medicine after completing conventional medical training.

When you choose to work with a functional physician, you select a person who has gone through traditional medicine school and may have chosen to earn additional certification from an organization such as The Institute for Functional Medicine. That is, functional medicine professionals consider all aspects of a patient's health and do not attempt to separate from each other based on their specialties: endocrinology, gynecology, neurology, and more.