Functional medicine’s goal is identify the root cause of a person’s disease or ailment. Each symptom or other diagnosis one has received could be a part of a larger issue, and the root causes haven’t been identified yet. Thus, the person is only receiving treatment for the symptoms of their core issue, not addressing the root cause of the core issue. Functional medicine focuses on the whole person, their family history, genetics, environmental and lifestyle factors.
Unfortunately, many doctors practicing medicine today focus mostly on acute care, focusing on short term issues, such as an infection or broken bone, which can be treated through medicine or surgery. However, this type of care is also used with chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cancers, high cholesterol, etc. Mostly doctors are treating the symptoms of these diseases instead of looking at the root causes and treating those. Functional medicine doctors also focus on working with their patients, making it a collaborative effort, instead of coming from the ideology that the doctor knows everything.
That’s why functional medicine is so important to our lives, so people can stop having their symptoms treated and start having the diseases treated and cured instead. What we do at the Center for Integrative and Functional Health and Wellness is a mixture of functional and integrative medicine that can help treat physical health issues and really get to the root of the problem.