What is Functional Medicine? How is it different from conventional medicine?
For those who are sick of being tired or tired of being sick, functional medicine offers new hope. Functional medicine involves identifying and addressing the root causes of chronic illness by treating the whole body and identifying the underlying factors that are causing symptoms and adversely affecting health.
Functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, using a systems-oriented approach and engaging both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership.
By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, functional medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. Our functional medicine practitioners spend time with our patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease. In this way, functional medicine supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual.
Making effective healthcare choices involves our functional medicine clinicians and patients in a relationship where information and belief, attention and insight, communication and trust all have value. Our functional medicine practitioners have been taught how to craft a personalized, systems-oriented therapeutic plan for each unique patient using evidence and insight, art and science.
There is a vast array of evidence supporting the functional medicine approach to care:
- The scientific community has made incredible strides in helping practitioners understand how environmental and lifestyle influences, moving continuously through an individual’s genetic heritage, psychosocial experiences, and personal beliefs, can impair basic biological functions. Using that knowledge to find the sources of each patient’s problems is powerful science.
- Scientific support for the functional medicine approach to treatment can be found in a large and rapidly expanding evidence base concerning the therapeutic effects of nutrition (including both dietary choices and the clinical use of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients such as fish oils), botanicals exercise (aerobics, strength training and flexibility), stress management, detoxification, acupuncture, manual medicine (massage and manipulation) and mind/body techniques such as meditation, guided imagery, and biofeedback.
- Medical science has recently provided strong evidence that the relationship between patient and clinician has a powerful effect on patient health outcomes. Functional medicine’s focus on the therapeutic partnership is clearly an important part of how patients heal.
How we apply Functional Medicine
How will a Functional Medicine approach benefit you and your health?
Functional medicine offers a new approach to management and prevention of chronic disease that embodies the art and science of medicine. We integrate what we know about how the human body works with patient-centered, science-based care.
We address the causes of chronic disease, which are rooted in lifestyle choices, environmental exposures, and genetic influences. We also incorporate naturopathic medicine and emphasize the therapeutic partnership, which engages the heart, mind, and spirit of both practitioner and client, and encourages moments of deep insight that contribute to more comprehensive answers to stubborn, complex medical problems.
Functional medicine offers a paradigm shift in clinical practice, thus producing a more effective response to chronic disease.
Our patients and providers work together as a team to identify and find ways to remedy the problem before it becomes a real problem. We listen to you and acknowledge your symptoms- then search for and address the root cause of your problem.
The focus at Kare Health & Wellness is promoting vitality, not just avoiding becoming “more sick”. We offer personalized medicine. We take the time to dig deep into your health history, address your unique concerns, and identify how various factors affect your health.
As partners in your health journey, we will work together to create a customized care plan that works for you. Come experience the difference of functional medicine. Implement the prescribed treatment, nutritional, lifestyle and exercise adjustments and you will find a better formula for the rest of your life.
What should you expect from a Functional Medicine approach?
How will Functional Medicine change your healthcare experience?
- We take our time getting to know our patients. Not only is critical information collected about factors that may have set the stage for (or may be contributing to) your present problems, but a comprehensive understanding of each patient’s habits of daily living, prior illnesses and traumas, environmental exposures, and genetic influences must be gained to get to the root cause of their issues.
- Our patients will need to provide background information on a variety of topics, such as toxic exposures at home and at work/school, a diet history, and characteristics of chronic and acute symptoms. These answers provide our clinicians with in-depth health-related information that is difficult to gather by interview alone.
- Laboratory tests are often recommended, including tests both familiar (e.g., CBC) and less conventional (e.g., stool analysis). These tests help determine which key biological processes are functioning properly and which are not—essential information for the development of a customized, comprehensive treatment plan to restore proper health.
- We will provide you with longer appointments to get to the answers. We identify the underlying causes of your health concerns. We uncover the earliest markers of disease to reverse or prevent them.
- Our treatments include pharmaceutical drugs, botanical medicines, nutritional supplements, therapeutic diets, detoxification programs, and counseling on lifestyle, exercise, or stress-management techniques.
- Our patients are active partners with their practitioner, taking a leading role in improving their health and changing the outcome of any diseases.
If you are ready to take charge of your healthcare, find and prevent chronic disease and stop the cycle of symptom/sick/script/repeat, call Kare Health & Wellness to become a new patient.