WHAT IS FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE AND HOW CAN IT HELP YOU?
What is Functional Medicine?
The Functional Medicine model is an individualized, patient-centered, science-based approach that empowers patients and physicians to work together as partners to address the underlying causes of disease and promote optimal wellness. In functional medicine the body is not seen as separated isolated organ systems that need to be divided up into numerous different specialties where each specialty does not deal with or address the rest but rather seen as one integrated system that is interconnected.
In Functional Medicine we treat the whole person, their whole system, all their concerns and their health and history in utero to birth to present. Doctor and patient are partners, teammates with the common goal of optimal health and well being for the patient not managing their disease for a lifetime and monitoring decay.
It requires a detailed understanding of each patient’s genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle factors and uses that information to implement customized personalized treatment plans that lead to improved patient outcomes. Read Dr Rashel’s The 9 Essential Pillars to Advance Health to gain a deeper understanding of all the aspects addressed when approaching a condition and patient through a functional medicine model of care.
By addressing root cause, rather than symptoms, physicians are able to identify the complexity of the disease process as exemplified by one condition having many different causes and, likewise, one cause resulting in many different conditions.
Therefore a Functional Medicine treatment plan targets all specific manifestations of disease in each individual and aims to reverse disease and reinstate a state of optimal health and well-being for each unique individual.
Functional Medicine Is Patient Centered Not Disease Centered:
- Starts with listening to you and hearing you. I make the time to thoroughly understand each patient’s unique story, history, lifestyle, environment, concerns, and goals.
- Is proactive, not reactive. My goal is to optimize your health, restore well-being, and protect your health by investigating and addressing the root causes of your health concerns, not merely to prescribe synthetic drugs with numerous serious ill side effects aimed only to mask symptoms without addressing the cause.
- Is customized, personalized and tailored for each unique individual. You are unique as your care should be. One size does not fit all. Professional guidance and customized, personalized solutions create better outcomes.
- Empowers and informs each individual patient. I provide you with resources and education so you can begin to understand what is actually at play and you can have an active role in the pursuit of your optimal state of health.
- Creates a strong relationship between patient and physician. I strive to recreate the relationship doctors had with their patients 50 years ago. They actually knew who their patient is. We are the higher-tech version of that time when a doctor understood all aspects of a client’s family history, lifestyle and environment.
