Functional medicine provides a customized approach to healthcare management that promotes health as positive vitality beyond just the absence of disease. It incorporates the latest laboratory testing, dietary interventions, and detoxification programs to help restore balance to both the body and mind.
How Does Functional Medicine Work?
Current standard medical practices manage functional medicine Denver. It shifts the traditional disease-centered approach towards a patient-centered one, and it is both preventative and individualized. Practitioners spend time with their patients, taking a detailed health history and examining the interactions of genetics, environment, diet, and lifestyle. They work to get at the root causes of the chronic illnesses plaguing our society. The emphasis is on preventing and reversing disease processes before they progress to the clinical stage, thereby saving future healthcare dollars. Typically, these underlying imbalances can be corrected using cutting-edge laboratory testing, including salivary and urinary hormone testing, comprehensive stool testing, food sensitivity testing, micronutrient deficiency testing, DNA sequencing, and nutritional therapy. Many of these interventions are simple, natural, and cost-effective. They can include dietary changes, herbs and supplements, stress-management techniques, physical activity, and detoxification programs.
What Are the Benefits of Functional Medicine?
Rather than just suppressing symptoms, functional medicine treats the underlying causes of disease. It looks at your lifestyle, history, and unique biology to develop a health-enhancing plan that optimizes your health. This is known by many different names, including holistic, integrated, personalized, and preventative care. Understanding your unique health concerns and developing a plan that works for you takes a long time. Functional medicine practitioners use specialized tests to appreciate your fantastic health picture. These tests are often more expensive than standard blood work, but they provide a much more comprehensive understanding of your health. With a focus on proper healthcare, functional medicine can help you with chronic debilitating illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. It can also help with other issues, such as hormonal imbalances and autoimmune conditions. The goal is to get you feeling healthy and keep you that way! This approach can save you lots of money in the long run.
How Can Functional Medicine Help You?
In addition to addressing your symptoms, a functional medicine practitioner can help you make changes to improve your system’s health. This includes examining how your food, toxins, stress, hormones, and genetics interact. A patient meeting with a functional medicine practitioner typically lasts an hour. Functional medicine is proper healthcare, focusing on the prevention and management of chronic disease through addressing the root cause. And it’s an approach that more and more patients are gravitating towards.
What Are the Concerns with Functional Medicine?
Functional medicine is based on an individualized approach to treatment and wellness. That means your doctor will work with you to determine how to help you stay healthy. This will include various options such as diet and lifestyle changes, supplements, and alternative therapies. A functional medicine practitioner typically spends at least 1 hour on your initial consultation. Their holistic, individualized approach makes them particularly well suited to treating stealth pathogens, as symptoms tend to move around the body and can be challenging to pin down. For example, fatigue may be your dominant symptom one day and depression the next. Researchers have found that patients treated by functional medicine practitioners experienced a more significant improvement in their global physical health.
