What is Functional Medicine?

Functional Medicine is a healthCare approach that assesses and treats underlying causes of illness through individually tailored therapies. The following are some basic tenets of functional medicine:

1) Uniqueness of patient
Unlike conventional medicine, functional medicine emphasises the physiological uniqueness of each patient. To paraphrase a famous literary quote, proponents of functional medicine believe that each patient's physiological system marches to the beat of a different drummer. Thus, effective treatment should be custom-tailored specifically to meet each patient's unique needs.

2) Minor symptoms should not be ignored
Even slight imbalances in the body can set the stage for more serious diseases down the road. This often happens by virtue of a "ripple effect," whereby a "minor" imbalance sets into motion a cascade of biological triggers that eventually leads to sub-optimal health, chronic illness, and degenerative disease. For this reason, a "let's-wait-and-see-if-this-develops-into anything-serious" attitude is not an acceptable approach in functional medicine.

3) Holistic Approach
The body is best examined and treated as an integrated whole, not simply an isolated set of parts. For accurate diagnosis and effective treatment, a clinician must consider ALL the possible long-reaching effects of various therapies/treatments on the entire body. Moreover, by assisting and augmenting the body's natural mechanisms of healing, the physician works with the dynamic process of homeostasis, rather than against it.