What is Functional Medicine?
Picture a trip to a typical primary care office:
“Hello I’m here for my appointment”
“Please fill this paper work out” Wait, wait, wait.
“Ok, come with me, any new changes to your insurance, any new medications?” Blood pressure, height, weight. Wait, wait, wait.
The provider comes in, quickly reviews the required questions and may be able to squeeze in some time to talk about other issues going on.
“Well I have been having a lot of stomach pain lately and I don’t always - you know, “go” regularly. And, well, I’ve been feeling little more anxious lately. I’m not really sure what’s going on. I’ve never felt this way before.”
Your provider recommends you drink more water, take a stool softener and call a therapist.
Deep down, you know there’s something else going on. You just don’t feel right. You’re not sure why you’re feeling anxious - because things are going pretty well for you. But you don’t know what else to do or where to turn.
You’ve already spent hours on late night internet search rabbit holes, only to have spent too much money on supplements that didn’t work and too much time getting lost in the links.
Enter - Functional Medicine!
At the heart of Functional Medicine, we are trying to solve the mystery of your health. Each symptom is a clue. And very often, the clues lead us to some usual suspects in the health imbalance mystery search.
Diet, Exercise, Gut Health, Stress Hormones, Hormone Imbalances, Toxin Exposures, Viral and bacterial imbalances, Poor Sleep are a few of the trouble makers we typically see out there causing some of the more common “undetectable” symptom causes. And believe me, they LOVE causing trouble together. Safety in numbers.
Back to the mystery at hand…
In this case, we may discover that as a child, you had a lot of ear infections. In typical medical fashion, you were prescribed a lot of antibiotics for them. You may have had gut issues for most of your life - feeling bloated, stomach pain here and there. Sometimes not having a bowel movement for a few days, sometimes having too many in one day.
But now it all seems to be getting worse.
And the anxiety is something you’ve never really had to deal with outside of common causes to feel situational anxiety before. You can’t understand why this is happening because you’ve been eating healthier!
You started doing the Keto diet, and you even lost a few pounds!
But…. what if dairy doesn’t work well for your body?
You’ve just added more into your diet on top of a low lying gut bacteria imbalance. This causes more inflammation in the gut lining. Your gut symptoms got worse, and you started to get anxiety for no noticeable reason.
Here’s the nail biter where the Functional Medicine symptom sleuth brings it all together just before the next commercial break….
The inflammation in the gut has led to a reduction of good bacteria - the good guys, regulator of all things intestinal. This gut imbalance made it easier for the bad bacteria to overgrow and cause constipation and diarrhea. Additionally, the inflammation is preventing your gut from being able to make and deliver serotonin to the brain. Serotonin is a “feel good” neurotransmitter, and 90% of it is produced in the gut!
The gut is a super highway of health - when the gut is out of balance, it is only a matter of time before the clues start popping up to show us the way to better address your health.
We now have the clues, the suspects and we’re ready to put our plan in action!
We will work on a plan that works for you. Everyone has different needs, different health histories, genetic components, different patterns and different styles of change.
A functional medicine provider looks to identify all the possible contributing factors, address them one by one and help you achieve long term health instead of just a quick fix. In this particular case, using supplements tailored to your symptoms and your history, dietary changes, mindfulness and breathing techniques could all help you find healing for the gut imbalances and anxiety you have been experiencing.
Functional Medicine is a methodical approach to individualizing your medical care to live your most optimal life possible!