What is Functional Medicine?
by Kirsten Petersen, DC
When you go to a traditional doctor with a set a symptoms, you usually leave with a diagnosis. You may also get a prescription, or some other type of recommended treatment to help with the symptoms. But rarely do people ask, where did the diagnosis come from? Functional medicine really likes to look at how you got there, not just what we call it. Because asking how you got there can give you clues on how to unwind things to get your health back.
Simply put, it is a lab-based system of analysis that relies primarily on natural health solutions. We use scientific labs and a thorough intake to determine where the problems lie, and focus on foundational treatments like diet, meditation, exercise and often use targeted nutritional or herbal supplements, all based on labs.
What makes someone a functional medicine doctor?
This one warrants some explanation, because you do need to be a doctor who is licensed to order labs, but functional medicine describes the way you practice with that information. There is no specific licensing for functional medicine, rather the doctor is practicing under their medical, chiropractic, naturopathic or oriental medicine doctorate licensing (and it is worth mentioning that it is different that Integrative Medicine, which describes integrating natural treatments, but not using functional assessments). You’ll have some physicians that only practice Functional Medicine and cease to use their original training. Most docs combine whatever their original training was with the Functional Medicine model. But before choosing a doc, you should make sure they have done extra training in functional medicine specifically, as this is not something that is yet covered in standard medical or chiropractic training.
What can I expect getting started?
You can expect getting asked a lot of questions! We want to know everything about how you feel, live, eat, and even digest your food. You will then have some testing done, and the extent of this will vary with the practitioner and with your situation. Some may be blood tests you will need to visit a lab for, and some may be tests you do at home and mail to the lab. Specialized GI assessments for your microbiome, measuring nutrient levels, checking liver detoxification pathways. SNP testing or genetic testing, food allergy testing, and hormone checks are a few examples of possible assessments.
Some people come to functional medicine as a last resort, and some come early for preventive medicine or to optimize their performance, so tests will be tailored for each person. Then we put all of the data together with how we have come to understand you as an individual and synthesize a treatment plan to get you started.
The use of Functional Medicine Labs
OK, so what do we do with all this information? We recommend lifestyle changes, which may sound pretty basic – optimize sleep, eat your vegetables, get outside and move, and be nice to yourself. That part is not groundbreaking, though we sometimes need to be told to do it and to work through the specifics with a guide. The groundbreaking part is the interpretation of the lab work and the development of health protocols based on the testing. The skill of functional lab analysis takes years to master, and is not the same as using standard lab “normal” ranges for basic assessment. We are using a systems-oriented model rather than piecing the body into specialties. We are addressing complex issues like blood sugar dysregulation, chronic pain and fatigue, cognitive decline and immune system dysregulation that don’t fit into a box of one diagnosis or need one specialist, but rather require a broad, overarching perspective that takes the whole person into account. This is how functional medicine gets the amazing outcomes that it does. It works with humans as they really function, not just how they fit into a icd-10 diagnosis model. Honoring our complexity in this way often reveals hidden problems that have plagued the person for decades.
How it fits into healthcare
Let me be clear. We are very lucky to have a highly advanced healthcare system in this country that excels at treating acute situations. We need all of our docs, and our standard medical model is extremely effective for acute care. Where we have the difficulty is with our more chronic cases, and this is where functional medicine could really be an incredible addition on a larger scale. It is an evolution in the practice of healthcare that frankly better addresses the needs of the 21st century, and we are expecting there to be a groundswell of consumers in the coming years who are pushing for this approach. I have already seen such an increase in awareness in our work over the last 10 years. The functional medcine community does not want this to be the best kept secret, rather to make it more accessible to more people and to have it integrated into the way we do healthcare.