Functional Medicine is NOT!

Last post (November 9, 2010) was a basic introduction to the principles of Orthomolecular Psychiatric Medicine.  This post I will explain its parent — Functional Medicine — and how it relates to anxiety therapy and anxiety relief.

Even though I am not a doctor, I use the principles of Functional Medicine in my nutritional consulting practice. It is also what my ebook “Let’s Get Physical: Anxiety is NOT All in Your Head“. People who have read it have found there were many things they were doing every day that was taking away from their health and creating a lifestyle of anxiety, panic, overweight, hormone imbalance, and fatigue.

This is the definition I found from the Institute of Functional Medicine: “Functional medicine is personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes instead of symptoms for serious chronic disease. It is a science-based field of health care that is grounded in the following principles:

• Biochemical individuality describes the importance of individual variations in metabolic function that derive from genetic and environmental differences among individuals.
• Patient-centered medicine emphasizes “patient care” rather than “disease care,” following Sir William Osler’s admonition that “It is more important to know what patient has the disease than to know what disease the patient has.”
• Dynamic balance of internal and external factors.
• Web-like interconnections of physiological factors – an abundance of research now supports the view that the human body functions as an orchestrated network of interconnected systems, rather than individual systems functioning autonomously and without effect on each other. For example, we now know that immunological dysfunctions can promote cardiovascular disease, that dietary imbalances can cause hormonal disturbances, and that environmental exposures can precipitate neurologic syndromes such as Parkinson’s disease.
• Health as a positive vitality – not merely the absence of disease.
• Promotion of organ reserve as the means to enhance health span.”

They also have a fabulous brochure explaining Functional Medicine and working with Functional Medicine practitioner found HERE.

American College for Advancement in Medicine, American Board of Holistic Medicine, and American Holistic Medical Association are organizations you can learn more about Functional Medicine as well as find practitioners. One of my favorite authors and Functional Medicine celebrities is Dr. Mark Hyman.  I encourage all of my clients to read his book UltraMind Solution. It is AMAZING! (Maybe I’ll do a book review in the future?)