Functional Medicine

Functional Medicine is a personalized, systems-oriented model that empowers patients and practitioners to achieve the highest expression of health by working in collaboration to address the underlying causes of disease. Functional Medicine, like Traditional Chinese Medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. Depending on your case and your personal needs, we use these two systems together or we may just recommend a singular approach to your care.

A major premise of Functional Medicine is that, using modern scientific analytical tools, we can identify many of the underlying causes of chronic disease and intervene to remediate the dysfunctions, both before and after frank disease is present. Stress, intestinal health, chemical burden, nutritional status, food sensitivities and immune competence are areas that we focus on evaluating when presented with chronic conditions.

Functional medicine offers a holistic approach where the underlying physical, chemical and emotional stressors are supported to help the body reduce inflammation so the body can start to heal itself. It does not involve treating medical diseases or prescribing medications; rather we utilize natural agents including herbs, vitamin and mineral supplements and enzymes, as well as diet modification and weight control to address the root cause of poor health.

Despite notable advances in treating and preventing infectious disease and trauma, the acute-care model that dominated 20th century medicine is not effective in treating and preventing chronic disease. It is estimated that genes only account for about 25% of chronic illness. Because chronic disease is largely a food, lifestyle and environment driven phenomenon, it won’t be conquered with drugs and surgery.

Chronic disease can only be reduced if we attack the underlying drivers of the epidemic—the complex, lifelong interactions among lifestyle, environment, and genetics.