Functional medicine is a different approach to treating the disease and the patient as compared to the conventional system of medicine. In functional medicine, the practitioner tries to find the underlying cause of the disease and uses a system-oriented approach. It is the new system that better addresses the healthcare needs of the people. Functional medicine uses a holistic approach and takes into the totality of the symptoms of the patient. It does not treat a single symptom or a single organ. Functional medicine practitioner interacts with the patient and listen to his history and find out the genetic, environmental, and genetic factors that may influence long term health problems.
Benefits of functional medicine
Functional medicine offers many benefits as compared to the conventional system of medicine. Important benefits are:
- It is a new medical system and helps in assessment, treatment, and prevention of chronic diseases effectively.
- It incorporates new techniques and involves the role of genetics, environment, and lifestyle factors that may influence or lead to the emergence and progression of the disease.
- It helps the physicians to practice proactive, personalized, predictive therapy and also involves the patient to take an active role in maintaining good health.
How functional medicine is different than conventional medicine?
Functional medicine is completely different than conventional medicine. A medical doctor uses drugs to treat the disease. He treats the symptoms of the disease and does not consider the root cause of the problem. In conventional medicine, there is a specialist to treat the disease of every organ and organ system in the body. A medical doctor diagnoses the disease and matches the diseases with the corresponding medicine. On the other hand, functional medicine does not treat the symptoms. It takes into consideration the person as a whole. Functional medicine practitioner considers the different factors that may be responsible for causing the disease such as genetic factors, environmental factors, and lifestyle factors. He interacts with the patient and both the physician and the patient work together to achieve the aim of attaining good health. In functional medicine, there is a different treatment for patients suffering from a similar medical problem.
Principles of functional medicine
The main principles of functional medicine:
- This system views each individual as being different. It offers personalized health care to each individual and treats the individual and not the disease.
- It is science-based. The research shows that what is happening inside the body is directly connected to a network of complex things. It is important to understand the relationship between the individual and the disease.
- Our body has an ability of self-regulation and it is expressed through a dynamic balance of all the body systems.
- Health is not only the absence of the disease but it is a state of immense vitality.
The functional medicine doctor will ask questions such as:
- Why are you suffering from this problem?
- Why your organ is not working properly?
- How can we restore the function of an organ?
Thus, in functional medicine, the patient plays an active role in their treatment because the system believes that the behavior of an individual is an important factor in contributing to chronic disease. In conventional medicine, the doctor does not ask any such questions. He orders some routine tests and on the basis of the report, he forms the diagnosis and prescribes the medicine that gives short term relief and the disease recurs. In functional medicine, the disease is treated from the root cause and there is no chance of recurrence.
