If you struggle with a complex or chronic illness or simply want a personalized approach to optimal health, functional medicine offers you a powerful option. Functional medicine doctors in Mega Health Services partner with you to explore the root causes of your illness and create a personalized plan to treat your mind, body and spirit.
Functional Medicine is a systems biology-based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of a disease. Functional medicine clinics take the holistic approach to understand who you are, knowing that every person is unique and should have a medical plan that is custom fit for their needs.
Instead of determining which drug will cure a disease, functional medicine clinics have doctors that discover why you have an ailment in the first place, and to restore what’s no longer functioning.
Functional medicine doctors use specialized training and techniques to find the root causes of complex illnesses. They may investigate multiple factors causing a condition, or they may look into multiple conditions causing one symptom.
The Functional Medicine model is an individualized, patient-centered, science-based approach that empowers patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease and promote optimal wellness. It requires a detailed understanding of each patient’s genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle factors and leverages that data to direct personalized treatment plans that lead to improved patient outcomes.
What Does a Functional Medicine Doctor Do?
Functional medicine doctors look at your full history to identify the root causes of an illness. They usually spend more time with you than conventional doctors. They collect detailed information about the disease and your overall lifestyle.
A functional medicine doctor may ask about:
- A timeline of symptoms
- Sleep patterns
- Exercise habits
- Nutrition
- Stressors
- Personal relationships
- Emotional wellbeing
Then, they come up with a treatment plan to manage multiple factors that may be contributing to chronic conditions. It may include prescription medications, supplements, or other therapies.
Finally, they track the progress of treatment and make changes as required. The functional medicine approach is different for each person since each treatment is customized to that person's specific illness.
Your relationship with a functional medicine doctor may also be different than with your primary care doctor. According to The Institute For Functional Medicine, it’s a more collaborative partnership: the doctor considers your input while still keeping you responsible for your choices as they relate to your condition and treatment.
With functional medicine, the care given is based on the system affected, not the condition diagnosed. For example, a diagnosis of depression may have multiple causes. A functional medicine doctor will research and treat each cause, leading to a personalized treatment approach.
Why you should see a Functional Medicine Doctor?
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1. Longer Appointments:
Functional medicine doctors typically spend more time with you because their process involves recording a detailed history. -
2. Alternative Treatments:
In addition to prescription drugs, functional medicine doctors may also prescribe alternative treatments like acupuncture, meditation, or herbal remedies. -
3. Chronic Illness:
Functional medicine is well suited to treating chronic illnesses. Doctors in this field seek to find the causes of chronic disease, as opposed to treating the symptoms. -
4. Personalized Experience:
Functional medicine addresses each person individually. Using different methods than a conventional medical doctor, a functional medicine doctor will help you figure out which specific treatments are right for you.
Principles of Functional Medicine
Some principles of functional medicine can be listed as:
- Everyone is different, both genetically and biochemically. With this in mind, functional medicine clinics take a personalized approach, treating the patient and not the disease. Instead of tackling the disease directly, functional medicine practitioners find ways for the body’s normal healing mechanisms to resolve the problem.
- Functional medicine is science-based. There is a complex network of interconnected relationships within our body, not unlike the many webs that connect us in other ways. By understanding those relationships, functional medicine practitioners can have a deeper comprehension of the body.
- The human body has the capacity of self-regulation. Your body has millions of systems that are interconnected with one another in a delicate balance. Sometimes certain conditions can knock your body off balance.
- Your body can often heal itself and can prevent nearly all of the diseases of aging.
- Health is a state of immense vitality, not just the absence of a disease or an ailment.
For more information, visit The Natural Roots Of Functional Medicine
You can call Mega Health Services at (703) 485-2000 or email at madhu@megahealthva.com to learn more about it.
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