The Institute of Functional Medicine
defines Functional Medicine as follows: Functional Medicine is a systems biology–based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or differential diagnosis may be one of many contributing to an individual’s illness. A diagnosis can be the result of more than one cause. For example, depression can be caused by many different factors, including inflammation. Likewise, a cause such as inflammation may lead to a number of different diagnoses, including depression. The precise manifestation of each cause depends on the individual’s genes, environment, and lifestyle, and only treatments that address the right cause will have lasting benefit beyond symptom suppression.
The Functional Medicine approach can be applied to a wide range of scenarios: to a person feeling fit and healthy wanting to maintain or optimise that state of health, as well as to a person showing specific symptoms of disease. A patient showing symptoms of acute illness or injury who requires time-critical emergency treatment will most likely be treated with a Conventional Medicine approach, such as surgery or emergency medication. A patient with a chronic condition however might chose to take the Functional Medicine approach, which is to reinstate and maintain function of the human brain and body by nutrition- and lifestyle-focussed means.
To clarify the difference between Functional vs Conventional Medicine: A consultation in both approaches begins with the symptoms that the patient presents with. Following a Conventional Medicine approach, the patient’s symptoms are investigated and managed with pharmaceutical interventions. Following a Functional Medicine approach, the symptoms are taken as the starting point of the investigation process to identify and eradicate the root cause of that symptom. This investigation might look back over the patient's entire life and might include a broad range of aspects of their life. The symptom-free life of that patient will likely feature a somewhat altered nutrition- and lifestyle-protocol – i.e. those substances and molecules that likely have caused the adverse reactions/ symptoms of disease will be avoided and likely nutrient deficiencies are replenished.
