What is Functional Medicine?

Scientific

Functional medicine is based on:

sound scientific principles
current medical research
important discoveries in nutritional medicine

Person-centred healthcare

The person, not the diagnosis, is the focus of care.

That is, functional medicine is person-centred, as opposed to disease-focused.

The body acts as a dynamic integrated whole with an ever-changing relationship between internal (mind, body and spirit) and external (physical and social environment).

Each person is bio-chemically unique, including the context of his or her life.

lifestyle
genetics
environmental factors

Understanding disease formation

In looking at the body as a whole, functional medicine explains illness as a dynamic imbalance, from its source, all the way through to its manifestation as a disease.

Virtually every complex, chronic disease is preceded by long-term disturbances in the body’s ability to function at its best. Even slight imbalances in the body can set the stage for more serious diseases down the road, so even minor symptoms should not be ignored. Symptoms are signposts to guide us to causes, imbalances and dysfunction that result in diseases.

Understanding the creation of illness in this way, reveals the points in the development of a disease where you can intervene and make a difference. Intervening early on you can watch the actual imbalance repair itself and eventually go away, restoring normal function in the body.

Naturally supportive

In Functional Medicine, interventions are naturally supportive the body’s own systems, like nutritional support or correcting harmful lifestyle factors, rather than, the management of the condition with chemical or surgical interventions to compensate for what the body is believed to not be able to do itself.