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What is
Functional Medicine?
“Functional
Medicine is an evolution in the practice of
medicine that better addresses the
healthcare needs of the 21st
century. 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. Functional medicine practitioners
spend time with their 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”.
Quotation by The Institute for
Functional Medicine:
www.functionalmedicine.org
In this
technologically advanced society, we
physicians are adept at taking phenomenally
accurate images of the human body, including
MRI, CT, MRA, Ultrasound, PET, SPECT scans,
and more. We gain valuable information from
such scans. However, much of the time these
body images show only the STRUCTURE of the
body, and don’t elucidate the FUNCTION
(exceptions being the PET and SPECT scans
which do show molecular function to some
extent).
Upon
reviewing such scans, which are simply
pictures showing the structure of
organs, many physicians tell their clients
that there is nothing wrong with them since
their pictures are normal. Thus the
FUNCTION of the organ system is ignored,
the patient frequently is told that s/he is
depressed or stressed-out and that they need
psychological treatment. However, the
Functional Medicine approach addresses such
situations and reveals the molecular matrix
which then offers a unifying explanation as
to the dysfunction of the body.
The
Institute for Functional Medicine
is a non-profit organization based near
Seattle, Washington, dedicated to training
physicians to address the molecular matrix
of the human body by performing detailed
consultation and molecular testing
evaluating the body as a whole. There are
several hundred of us physicians who
participate in these conferences, which keep
us up to date with the latest facts
regarding the human biochemistry.
AND WHAT COULD BE MORE
TRADITIONAL and SCIENTIFIC THAN THE FACTS
REGARDING THE BIOCHEMISTRY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF
THE HUMAN BODY?
The
Institute for Functional Medicine
was founded by Jeffrey Bland, PhD, about 30
years ago. I owe the satisfaction I enjoy
in seeing my patients get themselves into a
state of maximum wellness, directly to Dr.
Bland and to those clinicians affiliated
with him. I went to medical school to learn
how the human body works, so to speak, which
I began to learn in biochemistry and
physiology. Nothing could be more
satisfying in this field than to return to
the pure science of these subjects, and now
that we are beginning to understand the
human genome, our information is becoming
more and more precise. In addition to
learning and re-learning the biochemistry
which we were taught in medical school, we
are provided with the latest FACTS at the
PhD level, and then instructed by the most
advanced clinicians in the world as to how
best to employ the newest information in our
medical practices.
Now
that we know that there are about 33,000
genes per human, and we have identified over
3 million different arrangements of the
genes (SNP’s) unique to each individual, it
has become apparent that there can rarely be
any double blind studies in humans because
there are too many variables. And so
therefore, a new paradigm called Evidence
Based Medicine is evolving. Humbly, I
redefine my approach to wellness daily.
In this
profession, there is NO ROOM for arrogance,
and as Sir William Osler, MD, so succinctly
once said, “The greater the ignorance, the
greater the arrogance”.
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