Functional Medicine - what is it?
What is Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine uses high quality published biological science to understand the causes of health and disease, and to intervene on those causes to promote health and prevent or treat illness.
This is in contrast to the orthodox medical model - which is an acute allopathic pharmaco-centric medical model.
Allopathic means it is focused on disease, acute means the models involved were designed for acute (i.e. sudden, short lived) illness and pharmaco-centric is self-explanatory.
Functional medicine largely avoids the bias in orthodox medicine towards costly chronic disease ‘management’ and the acute care model. This allows functional medicine practitioners to utilise a much broader base of published biological science for their patients.
Over time, medicine will tend towards a functional model. But embracing it now offers patients a significant advantage.
Let’s take diabetes for example. Orthodox medicine considers people to be well until they have abnormal sugar levels in blood. But this abnormality occurs at a late stage in the development of the illness - a stage where much of the preventive medicine opportunities have been lost.
Functional medicine practitioners intervene earlier and on more causal mechanisms - early diet and exercise advice, early treatment of the insulin resistance etc.. By intervening early not only can you prevent the development of Diabetes, but you can also prevent the development of a host of related illnesses – fatty liver, poly cystic ovarian disease, obesity, cardiovascular disease and even cancer.
I use the term FAARM - Functional Anti-Ageing and Regenerative Medicine. Why? Functional, addressing the underlying functional causes, Anti Ageing, addressing the cellular drivers of chronic disease and ageing and regenerative, regenerating the youthful homeostasis of tissues and organs.
Here a link to a series I am publishing about FAARM and how it’s concepts can be used to promote health and prevent illness.
https://www.amazon.es/-/en/dp/B0DJ5TMPJL?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_sirpi
Copyright Dr Christopher Maclay 2024. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer: This information is for educational purposes only, it does not constitute medical advice. Please consult with your health care practitioner for personalised medical advice.