Functional medicine is a science-based approach to healthcare that looks at addressing the underlying cause of a condition. Each sign and symptom is thought to contribute its own factor to the disease a patient suffers from. It offers the “how” and “why” around an illness in order to effectively treat it.
The functional medicine model is patient-centered and empowers both doctors that practice the approach and their patients seeking guidance. It reveals the root cause of a condition and ultimately promotes optimal health and wellness. It requires detailing each patient’s biochemical, genetic, and lifestyle factors. Leveraging this data, functional medicine practitioners create a customized treatment plan that focuses on improving and reducing symptoms to enhance a patient’s quality of life.
Imbalances with a patient’s system take the form of “signs and symptoms” when conditions and illnesses have surfaced. Therefore, improving and sustaining balance will help restore health; however, this takes much more than simply treating symptoms. Functional medicine is committed to enhancing the management of conditions and illnesses by intervening at multiple levels to address a body’s clinical imbalances and restore each patient’s functionality and health.
This approach to health and wellness is not a unique and separate ideology. It is based on scientific information and principles widely available in today’s medicine. It combines research from a number of disciplines of effective clinical management and disease pathogenesis.
At Integrated Medicines of Ohio, our doctors foster health and wellness by taking a closer look at the underlying factors that influence our patients’ conditions.
Each practitioner assesses a patient’s key clinical imbalances through careful physical examination, history taking, and lab testing. Our doctors will consider a number of things, including:
Your Environment: The air you breathe, the water you consume, the quality and kinds of food you eat and that are available to you, the level of exercise you engage in, plus, possible traumas or toxic exposures, can all affect your health. Lifestyle is a major factor for diseases. In fact, research reveals that approximately 70 to 90 percent of chronic illness risk is attributable to lifestyle.
Your Mind & Body: Social, spiritual, and psychological elements, including stress management, can influence your health. Focusing on these factors helps our practitioners see your wellness in the context of you as a whole person, not just your “signs” and “symptoms”.
Genetics: Although your family history can increase your risk of some illnesses, your genetics is not an unchanging blueprint. Research reveals that your DNA may be influenced by everything in your environment, plus your beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. That means it is possible to change the way genes are expressed and activated.
Fundamental Physiological Processes: These are the body’s systems and processes that keep you alive and kicking! Some involve how your cells function, maintain, and repair themselves. These are also linked to larger functions, like how your body:
All of these processes are influenced by your environment and genes, so when they are imbalanced, this can cause symptoms to surface, which can therefore lead to illness.
Most disturbances in our body’s functionality can be addressed, while some can be completely restored, and others can be significantly enhanced. At Integrated Medicines of Ohio, we take a comprehensive approach to treatment. Each patient plan differs, and each is personalized. Here’s our outlook.
Prevention is key. Almost every chronic illness is preceded by long-term disturbances in functionality that can be identified and effectively managed.
Changing how your system function can have a major impact on your health. Our functional medicine practitioner looks at a variety of available interventions and customizes a treatment plan for patients.
Functional medicine goes beyond a physician’s tool kit. Treatments may include combinations of supplements, drugs and/or botanical medicines, detoxification programs, or therapeutic diets. They may also include counseling on nutrition, stress management, exercise, and overall lifestyle changes.
Our patients become our partners. As a patient, you become an active partner within your treatment plan. You may be asked to make changes that, when combined with other treatment options target specific functional needs. This allows you to take control in improving your own health and changing the outcome of your condition.
