Functional medicine is a subset of healthcare that aims to discover the root causes of illness for each individual. In so doing, it takes a comprehensive approach to promote optimal health. It employs an in-depth understanding of each patient’s individual factors, including genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle. Providers then use this data to create personalized treatment plans. The advantages of this approach span far and wide, but here are just a few to consider.
Patient-Oriented
Functional medicine is highly personalized. The provider and patient act as a team, working together to understand the underlying causes of illness. Your practitioner may ask you questions about your lifestyle, environment, family health history, and other individual factors to develop a complete understanding of your health.
A Focus on Overall Health
With conventional medicine, a patient usually visits the doctor when they notice a certain symptom. The doctor will then aim to diagnose the condition based on those symptoms, and offer treatment to make the symptoms subside.
Functional medicine takes a much more comprehensive approach than this disease care model. They recommend a broad range of methodologies which could include supplements, nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction to address illness and promote optimal overall health.
Consideration of Underlying Causes
All patients want uncomfortable symptoms to go away, but by focusing on symptoms alone, conventional medicine fails to address the systemic issues that could contribute to worsening overall health. Instead of simply making a diagnosis and providing medications for the illness, functional medicine practitioners look deeper, assessing imbalances that could be causing the condition at hand, along with any others.
By addressing the underlying mechanisms of a condition instead of just its symptoms, functional practitioners can offer a more sustainable solution to illness.
Comprehensive Treatment
Conventional medicine may only offer limited approaches to managing a condition. Drugs, physical therapy, and surgeries are typically prescribed to help patients control symptoms. Functional medicine looks at a broader spectrum of treatment options. Treatment could include lifestyle changes such as nutrition and exercise, as well as alternative medicine approaches and regenerative medicine therapies, among others.
Comprehensive home tests can be done in the comfort of your home. These tests will be able to provide you with the deficiencies and insufficiencies that can help discover root causes to symptoms you may be experiencing, lack of energy, or as a preventative overall health measure. Contact a Care Coordinator to learn about a new wellness program that begins with comprehensive testing.
This post was written by a medical professional at Stemedix Inc. At Stemedix we provide access to Regenerative Medicine for back pain, also known as degenerative disc disease. Regenerative medicine has the natural potential to help improve symptoms sometimes lost from the progression of many conditions.
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