WHAT IS FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE?

What is Functional Medicine? - back to top

Functional medicine is a patient-centered healthcare approach that focuses on getting to the root causes of each individual’s health issues, and improving the functions that help us thrive and be well.

Here are just two of the reasons functional medicine works so well, even when other approaches may have failed:

• Functional medicine focuses on improving the physiological function as a primary method of improving the health of patients.
• Functional medicine deals with addressing underlying causes instead of just a symptom based treatment approach.

Regardless of the condition or complaint a patient may have, a physiology based approach is taken. While there are certain universal principles, two patients with the same condition may have very different treatment plans. In other words, we treat the patient not their condition.

Functional medicine focuses on the root causes of illness, rather than the symptoms.

A symptom-based approach to medicine may be content to give you a pill to manage a symptom--or worse, to mask it. But the reason you have symptoms is because some system in your body is not working as well as it should. So, functional medicine looks at those systems and seeks to restore them to their ideal state where they are working as they are meant to work. This is called a physiology-based approach, meaning functional medicine addresses your physiology—how the systems in your body function to contribute to your overall health. This makes it different from the condition-based approach of some other medical traditions.

To give an example, a symptom-based approach might look at a high blood sugar level (the symptom), diagnose diabetes (the condition), and prescribe a pill to manage the blood sugar level. This does not address the underlying causes of the high blood sugar level—it just enables you to keep living with the condition without fully experiencing one of its symptoms. Functional medicine looks at you as a person, addresses what functions in your body are contributing to the high blood sugar level, and works with you to correct these functions and restore you to health. The end result is that, not only do you get relief from the symptom, but your body as a whole is functioning in better health.

Functional medicine focuses on the individual.

Symptom-based traditions tend to use a cookie cutter approach to medicine. This goes back to their focus being on the symptom and the condition, not the individual person. But, while functional medicine recognizes certain main principles that apply to most people, the approach is tailored to you as an individual. You and your best friend may both have diabetes, but in functional medicine, how this is addressed may be very different for each of you, because the treatment plan will be developed between you and your functional medicine practitioner based on your particular physiology (how the systems in your body function), blood chemistry, priorities, and needs.

Functional medicine includes many methods and ideas, but three of the most used and important ones are functional blood chemistry analysis, functional endocrinology, and functional immunology.

FUNCTIONAL BLOOD CHEMISTRY ANALYSIS - back to top

One of the first things that will happen when you begin working with a functional medicine practitioner is that he or she will order a comprehensive blood chemistry panel to get an overall picture of your body’s metabolism.

Remember that the goal here is to get at the root causes of any health issue you may have, so functional blood chemistry analysis is like a fact-finding mission to see what is going on with the different systems in your body. This lab work will give your functional medicine practitioner vital information about your kidneys, liver, blood sugar, cholesterol, calcium, electrolytes, proteins, red blood cells, immune cells, hormones, blood clotting, inflammation, and vitamin/mineral status.

So, how important is functional blood chemistry analysis? According to Dr. Datis Kharrazian, author of “Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms?” and “Why Isn’t My Brain Working?” and an internationally renowned expert in functional medicine and nutrition, "There is no general screening test that is more efficient, effective, and affordable than a comprehensive blood chemistry panel.”

Dr. Kharrazian points out that “a comprehensive blood chemistry panel will allow the healthcare provider to quickly assess the degree of health or disease in a patient. It is the ultimate tool in biomedical laboratory sciences to evaluate new patients. It allows the healthcare provider to establish a baseline of biomarkers that can be used to track the patient’s health immediately and over time."

The number and type of markers that are tested is only half the picture, though; what really takes functional blood chemistry analysis to the next level, beyond what is done routinely by your conventional doctor, is its approach to something called reference ranges.

Reference ranges are the range of numbers the doctor compares your results to, to see if your results are “normal” or problematic in some way (for example, a reference range for glucose is 65-110).

The reference ranges used in symptom-based approaches have some shortcomings:

• They are based on an average of the individuals who had that test done, so the range doesn’t really show where a person should be for their systems to be functioning at an optimal level.
• With a few exceptions, they are not standardized throughout the country, so ranges can differ from region to region.

Functional blood chemistry analysis looks beyond these ranges, and compares your tests results to a "functional" range that shows where you should be for your body’s systems to be operating at a healthy and optimal level. That’s why it’s so common to have a person who is experiencing symptoms, but whose labs are reported as "normal" by someone untrained in functional blood chemistry analysis. When the labs are looked at through a different filter, and compared to functional ranges, then the real problem often becomes clear.

FUNCTIONAL ENDOCRINOLOGY - back to top

Your endocrine system performs a vital role in your body: through a network of glands including the thyroid, ovaries, pancreas, and adrenal glands, the endocrine system produces and secretes hormones that are needed for your body to function.

Hormones are chemical signals that regulate lots of different functions in your body, from metabolism to growth and reproduction. When these signals are not produced in the correct amount, or when something prevents them from getting to where they should be or doing the job they are supposed to be doing, your body doesn’t function properly.

Conventional endocrinology tries to pinpoint which glands aren’t working the way they should, and then uses a drug or pharmaceutical to replace, suppress, or support the affected hormones.

Functional endocrinology aims first to identify dysfunctional glands early on, before the problem leads to disease. This early detection is often ignored and untreated in conventional endocrinology, sometimes even despite a person having symptoms.

Functional endocrinology also involves getting to the root of dysfunction and addressing the cause of the problem, instead of just suppressing the symptom. Just like functional blood chemistry analysis, functional endocrinology includes lab work that looks beyond the conventional reference ranges.

FUNCTIONAL IMMUNOLOGY - back to top

Your immune system is basically like your body’s defense mechanism, enabling you to fight off infection and illness.

It helps your body understand what things are healthy and belong in it, and which things aren’t healthy and don’t belong. When this system is not working to full capacity, you are more susceptible to illness; when this system works too hard, we can see things like allergies, autoimmune disease, or transplant rejection.

One of the most common things that can result from a dysfunctional immune system is autoimmunity, which is when your immune system kicks into hyper drive and starts attacking your body’s own tissues, because it can no longer tell the difference between something unhealthy that doesn’t belong in the body, and something healthy that does belong in the body. Autoimmunity is actually the third leading cause of sickness and death today.

Lots of people with chronic health problems unknowingly have autoimmunity, but don’t get diagnosed by conventional medicine until they are in the end stages of disease. That’s where functional immunology comes in. Just like functional blood chemistry analysis and functional endocrinology, functional immunology includes lab tests that look beyond those conventional reference ranges, which allows for much earlier detection of any problem with the immune system.

HOW CAN FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE HELP ME? - back to top

If you are dealing with any kind of chronic medical condition, from thyroid issues to diabetes, allergies to arthritis, or obesity to asthma, just to name a few, then functional medicine is a way for you to get to the root of your health problem instead of just taking medicine to manage your symptoms.

Here are just a few ways you can benefit from functional medicine:

• You will be looked at as an individual, not a condition or symptom.
• You and your functional medicine practitioner will form a partnership, and create your treatment plan together, customizing it to your particular needs and priorities.
• This targeted approach to focusing on your priorities can help you to see the results you want in the fastest way possible.
• This approach is non-invasive. Instead of relying on surgery or drugs, functional medicine takes a holistic approach to addressing imbalances in the systems in your body that are at the root of your health issues.

Think of it this way: Your body is like a car—a highly sensitive machine with lots of parts that have to interact correctly with each other to function, or to drive. To keep a car in good condition or fix a problem, it’s not enough to just know about how struts or tires or brakes work—you need to know how all of those things work together.

That’s what functional medicine does. It looks at the big picture, recognizing that all of those systems are connected.

One other image that may help is to think of a tree. The roots and base of the tree are all of the things that influence your health and contribute to what you see in the trunk: the different imbalances the systems in your body can have, and the signs and symptoms these imbalances lead to. These signs and symptoms then expand out into the branches of medicine that address the body’s systems.

Functional medicine looks at the whole tree, rather than just picking off one twig or leaf. The end result is better overall health.

WHAT IS FUNCTIONAL NEUROLOGY? - back to top

Neurology is a branch of medicine that deals with how the nervous system functions.

Your nervous system is a very elaborate system that controls various activities of the body. It includes the central nervous system, which is your brain and spinal cord, and your peripheral nervous system, which is all of your sensory organs and the nerves that connect them to your brain.

Your nervous system is like the electrical wiring of your body: it’s responsible for the signals that go back and forth between your brain and other parts of your body. These signals coordinate and regulate your voluntary movements (like moving your hand to pick up an object) and your involuntary movements (like digestion or breathing).

Problems with the nervous system can cause a lot of health issues, from headaches and seizures to stroke or diseases that affect memory or movement like Alzheimer’s or Parkinsons.

Traditional neurology focuses on diagnosing a neurological disease, and then using drugs or surgery to try to manage the disease. This approach can have some shortcomings, though:

First, what most people have is not a true pathology (disease), but rather a dysfunction or imbalance in their body’s functions. Conventional medicine only looks for diseases, not functional disorders, so it can end up using medications to control the symptoms of these disorders without actually addressing what is causing the problem in the first place.

Second, traditional medicine often has a “textbook” or cookie-cutter approach to health: Symptom A and B mean you have Condition C, so your treatment is Drug E and Surgery F. But you are an individual, not an equation in a textbook, and symptom A and B for you may mean something different than they do for another person.

Finally, there are a lot of conditions out there that, once diagnosed, have no conventional medical treatment, or at least none that are very effective.

Here's what makes functional neurology different:

• Functional neurology takes a holistic approach, so it looks for the imbalances and disorders in the way the body functions, instead of just automatically equating certain symptoms with a pathology or disease.
• Functional neurology works to restore the body’s proper neurological functioning without drugs or surgery.
• People are seen as individuals in functional neurology, so there is no cookie-cutter approach. Your child’s ADHD may have a completely different treatment plan than that of your neighbor’s child.
• For all of these reasons, functional neurologists often work very successfully with individuals who may not have any options, or very limited options, offered to them by conventional neurology.

The basic concepts of functional neurology were developed by, Professor Frederick Carrick, of the Carrick Institute for Professional Studies in Florida.

His groundbreaking work shows that neurons (nerve cells) and the nervous system are responsible for regulating and coordinating our expression and experiences.

There are certain things our neurons need to be healthy: they need the proper exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, they need nutrients like glucose, and they need the stimulation and activation necessary for them to do their jobs.

Functional neurology looks at how well our neurons are getting the fuel and stimulation necessary for their health and proper functioning, and seeks to restore balance if there is any lack or dysfunction.

Functional neurologists can use a variety of tests for this, from simple physical exams to measuring characteristics of eye movements, but the tests are non-invasive, so they are safe and appropriate for a wide range of patients. A functional neurologist will use these tests to judge the reaction of different parts of the nervous system to see which areas may have a lack or imbalance. The same tests can be used later to judge how effective the treatment was.