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Functional medicine is a research based approach to identifying and treating the underlying causes of illness beyond symptoms. While symptoms are a key to diagnosing disease and symptom control eases distress, new research integrated into traditional medicine can prevent the symptoms and their underlying disease from occuring. New science since the completion of the human genome project is revealing expanded and fresh knowledge of the origins and progression of chronic disease. Successful management of patients with chronic illnesses requires knowledge of these recent advances in the health sciences and analysis of complex information that crosses the conventional boundaries of organ-system medicine and specialization. Funtional medicine combines tried and true knowledge in areas of nutrition, hormone balance, biochemical enzyme function and the interplay between the systems in the body and new information about human genetics. Practicing clinicians integrate the rich and robust science of organ-system medicine with an idividualized assessment of the patient's life experiences, with or without genetic analyses, to achieve a clinical approach that provides more comprehensive and compassionate evaluation and treatment plans. The focus is on restoring balance to the dysfunctional systems by stregthening (repairing, rebuilding, restoring) the fundamental physiological processes that underlie them, and by adjusting the environmental inputs that nuture or impair them. The functional medicine approach leads to therapies that focus on restoring health and function, rather than simply controlling signs and symptoms. It can be characterized as " upstream medicine' or " back to basics"- back to the patient's life story, back to the processes wherein disease originates, and definitely back to the desire of health care practitioners to make people well, not just manage symptoms. The most important precept to remember about functional medicine is that restoring balance - in the patient's environmental inputs, in the mind-body-spirit connections, and in the body's fundamental physiological processes - is the precursor activity to evaluating and treating chronic illness and improving health.
[This description was adapted from course materials provided by the non profit educational company, The Institute of Functional Medicine, for the week long intensive course, APPLYING FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE IN CLINICAL PRACTICE.] Susan Taney, N.P. |