Why Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine can transform your life!
Travel with us on a journey back to better health!
For more than 10 years we have been using Functional Medicine to delve deep down to the root causes of chronic conditions.
We ask what has gone wrong with the normal functioning of the body to create a situation where the chronic condition has developed.
We use the latest in genetic science, systems biology, cutting-edge laboratory techniques and understanding of how environmental and lifestyle factors influence the emergence and progression of disease.
We take time to identify where and how we can start your body on a journey back to health.
And we travel with you on that journey back to better health – a journey that requires time and dedication on both sides to repair what may have been wrong for many years or more.
Conventional Medicine
While conventional medicine is extremely successful in managing acute situations – broken bones, bacterial infections, heart failure or stroke, etc, the methodology falls short when faced with chronic conditions such as fatigue, IBS, autoimmune problems, and migraine headaches.
The same approach is used for chronic conditions as acute conditions:
- Identify the symptoms
- Attach a label to the condition (diagnosis)
- Prescribe a ‘treatment’ (drugs, surgery, and sometimes diet) which typically do not address the underlying problem
However, long term use of prescription medications to manage symptoms often creates different problems such as adverse reactions or cross reactions between multiple drugs. Functional Medicine takes a different approach by identifying the underlying causes that led to the chronic condition and addressing these root causes rather than suppress the downstream symptoms or lab markers.
The History of Functional Medicine and The Institute for Functional Medicine
In 1990, Jeffrey Bland created the concept of Functional Medicine as a discipline that married progress in basic medical sciences with expertise in clinical medicine to address the growing problems associated with chronic disease.
In 1991, Jeffrey and Susan Bland founded and funded The Institute for Functional Medicine with the mission to both educate and provide clinical support for the implementation of Functional Medicine across disciplines within the healthcare sector.
Functional Medicine was conceived by its founders as a systems-biology approach to the prevention and management of chronic disease utilizing appropriate tools including nutrition, lifestyle, exercise, environment, structural, cognitive, emotional, and pharmaceutical therapies to meet the individual needs of the patient. Learn more