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About Functional Medicine

We help in preventing and reversing chronic conditions by addressing the root cause(s) and engaging you in a collaborative journey towards optimal wellness.

Why Functional Medicine?

The traditional approach waits until a disease manifests and then in many cases treats the symptoms of the disease with pharmaceutical medicines to make the symptoms bearable. In this context, pharmaceutical medicine is powerful and tremendously important. However in many situations it does not address the underlying cause of the disease. The partnership of functional medicine with the traditional approach can be a powerful union. 

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Functional Medicine is an evidence-based, systems biology approach that focuses on identifying the root cause of disease. Functional medicine searches for the root issue that caused the symptoms then works to correct that underlying issue. The symptoms will then typically reduce or resolve as a result. This is the only way to have a lasting benefit beyond just suppressing symptoms.

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An illustration comparing the 2 approaches would be to consider a patient suffering from an eczema rash.  Conventional medicine would prescribe a steroid cream to reduce the itching and discoloration of the rash.  Functional medicine would identify the food or environmental allergy that is causing the body to develop the rash and remove it from the diet or environment.

Root Cause of Diseases

Dysbiosis: Healthy bacteria in the gut are responsible for aiding in the digestion of our food, producing essential nutrients, such as B vitamins, biotin, short-chain fatty acids such as acetate, propionate, and butyrate and keeping our intestines healthy. Our gut bacteria have a role in producing the hormones that regulate hunger, mood, stress, circadian rhythms, metabolism, and inflammation. They regulate our immune system, playing a role in soothing autoimmune conditions, and improving our ability to fight off infections and cancer. Stress, vaccines, antibiotics, pesticides, chlorine, fried foods, alcohol, pesticides and thousands of other synthetic chemicals and a diet consisting of processed food can all conspire to negatively affect the health of our gut and exposing us to disease.

 

Lack of Key Building Blocks: Our body needs a variety of macro and micronutrients as fuel and building blocks for its functioning. When nutrient levels are suboptimal, the body triages what it has to cover tasks essential to our immediate survival while compromising other jobs that are important, but less dire.

 

Poor lifestyle choices, such as smoking, overuse of alcohol, poor diet, lack of physical activity and inadequate relief of chronic stress are key contributors in the development and progression of preventable chronic diseases.

 

Toxicity: Accumulation of toxins and toxic stressors lead to a total body burden upon our health. Detoxification is therefore very important in the quest to address underlying causes of illness.

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