Functional Medicine
It’s the future of Medicine.
Come and be part of the journey.
Functional Medicine Vs Conventional Medicine
The Problem With The Conventional Approach
Modern medicine has evolved progressively over the last 60 years or so, with new drugs and better surgical procedures to help people with all kinds of health problems. However, it has become woefully apparent that there are many limitations of conventional medicine in treating and helping patients with chronic conditions. Metabolic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, strokes are on the rise, and yet conventional interventions cannot cure these conditions, they only intervene to manage them. So, patients become dependent on medications. This leads inevitably to a slippery slope to a poorer state of health.
Add to that the increasing list of late diagnosed patients with chronic conditions. This is invariably due to the conventional and limited interpretation of medical tests, and the underuse of more subtle and yet rich functional medicine tests to determine dysfunction. The body is very subtly giving you clues that something is wrong, whether its inflammation, oxidation fatigue, poor sleep, brain fog, increased anxiety/stress and the trick is knowing which diagnostic test to use to determine that particular dysfunction.
Enter Functional Medicine
A group of Doctors and Biochemists realised these short-comings of conventional medicine back in the 1990’s, seeing how in America, more and more people were becoming chronically ill. They needed a new approach to healthcare, and so they developed the Institute of Functional Medicine to reflect a new approach to diagnosing diseases and conditions together with a model of helping people reverse their conditions, more naturally.
As the Institute grew in the early 21st century it started to attract the interest of a lot more doctors, to such a point where training programs were developed to instil in doctors and practitioners the understanding of functional medicine and use the correct testing and approaches to regain health.
One Condition, Many Causes. One Cause , Many Conditions
Philosophy Of Functional Medicine
Come and be part of the journey!
The philosophy is straightforward, it is to understand the root cause of disease or dysfunction occurring in the body, and to restore health by removing the root causes so the body can achieve optimal wellbeing. The body wants to be healthy, it wants to maintain optimal balance and energy, but daily insults from our lifestyle weaken our body’s resilience.
Functional medicine is the future of medicine, as it can save not only on the public purse, in hospital care but also personally too, with less dependence on drug medications and surgeries. It’s radical, its innovative but its also totally logical, scientific and natural.
Functional Medicine FAQs
Functional Medicine is a new discipline in healthcare developed around 20 years ago in the USA. Its focus is to establish the root causes of diseases in people, and to fix those root causes naturally and safely using the appropriate assessments, lifestyle changes and supplemental, therapeutic interventions. The primary teaching and education platform of functional medicine is the Institute of Functional Medicine in the USA. www.ifm.org.
The functional medicine approach requires an in-depth review of a patients history, evaluating all aspects of family history, lifestyle and current symptoms. Then the Dr/ practitioner makes suggestions for laboratory testing or treatment depending on the condition. Follow up sessions will include changes to lifestyle, supplement, medication, according to patients needs together with an assignment to a coach to monitor progress in lifestyle change.
Any patient who is on current medication will be referred back to their prescribing doctor for making any changes to their regime. Peak Metabolisms’ doctors will prescribe medications if need be according to patients requirements.
Functional Medicine is about treating the root causes of diseases and symptoms by focusing on the imbalances in the body and correcting those imbalances using natural means. All functional medicine interventions are proven through science-backed peer reviewed studies. Conventional medicine is about management of diseases and suppression of symptoms, using pharmaceutical interventions which often come with side effects. There’s a place for both practices of medicine.
