The practice of functional medicine is designed to address unique causes of diseases within one patient which differentiates the treatment given to another patient with similar symptoms yet slightly differing variables. Each patient may undergo comprehensive testing and observation of the genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle environment surrounding the patient. As no two patients can ever be the same in all these factors, the treatments, accordingly, must be tailored uniquely to that patient.
Many drugs, for example, are currently tested in a randomized placebo-controlled trial (RCT), meaning there are at least two groups involved, with one getting the drug at a set dosage, while the other receives a dummy drug or nothing at all. Or there can be a third group receiving a lower or higher dose of the drug. RCTs are designed as parallel, crossover, or factorial. While RCTs deal with groups of people in a setting, functional medicine, and subsequent treatment is designed to focus on the systems of the body(circulatory, digestive, lymphatic and endocrine system etc.) and how they’re interacting with the other systems and the environment they are in contact with.
Health comes from proper functioning. Symptoms are the body’s way of telling us, something is not functioning properly. So we dive into finding out why. We know that drugs are not the answer to why the body isn’t functioning properly, it’s a way to force the body to stop those symptoms from showing up. For example a doctor may prescribe to you a high blood pressure medication(anti-hypertensive) to lower the blood pressure but never find out why they’re blood pressure has been rising.
Not finding or searching for the reason WHY somebody’s blood pressure is rising is in our opinion dangerous when dealing with a person’s health symptoms. We call this SICK CARE, at Pure Health Medical we focus on the HEALTH CARE of a person. Finding out why the body is trying to raise the blood pressure. For instance the inability for your blood vessels to be able to expand (stretch) could be coming from a nutrient deficiency or the elevated blood pressure could be a response to stressors in the environment externally or internally. Either way functional medicine is there to find these difficult answers.
Food Sensitivity
Here is an example of a typical scenario where your functional medicine doctor provides personalized review and assessment to identify the condition.
A patient comes into the doctor’s office complaining of constant fatigue and irregular bowel movements, ranging from constipation to bouts of diarrhea with painful stomach cramps. Rather than suggesting that the patient should take a certain number of milligrams of a prescribed drug, the first step is to have the patient record what is eaten every day and at what time of day each described meal is eaten.
The patient creates the list of food eaten and there appears to be a correlation between the coffee consumed upon rising, the cereal and milk eaten for breakfast, and diarrhea occurring more often in late morning hours rather than later in the day. The patient is told to drink the coffee and wait an hour before eating the cereal. The patient reports back that the coffee does not upset his stomach but, half an hour later after eating his cereal, he begins getting the usual stomach cramps.
The patient is tested for dairy immune reaction by testing the antibody levels to certain components of dairy. The doctor provides a different menu to eat for breakfast which proves very successful within a week. Another outcome is the patient is not as tired, bloated or inflamed. In this case, it is a change in diet and uncovering that dairy should be removed from the diet for a time being until we reset the immune system is the correct move to improve the health condition.
Allergies
Another example of a general case where a functional medicine doctor analyzed the patient’s condition and circumstances and applied proper testing to determine the cause and then solution.
A patient complained of always waking up with dry irritated eyes and a stuffy nose. When asked if there was a lot of dust in the room, the patient said yes. The AC vent was on the ceiling to the left of the bed and when it came on intermittently, it blew air right onto the patient. The patient also had pets that slept on the bed at night.
The patient tested positive with a dust mite allergy test. The recommendation for irritated eyes was to have a small air purifier placed in the room and turned on at night. Next, specialized AC filters were recommended, and the patient decided to have the vents cleaned out as well, suspecting this was half the problem with eye irritation. However, the pets remained in place but were brushed down a few hours before going to bed. These solutions were proven successful within two weeks after implementation.
Call Us Today if You Need Personalized Help with Your Health Issues
At Pure Health Medical, our experienced functional medicine doctor can help you find out what is affecting your well-being and get you feeling healthier and more energetic faster.
Check out our Functional Medicine page to see if any of these conditions relate to your issues.
If you feel extremely fatigued, have stomach and gut problems, or have other health issues, call us now at 614-839-1044 to schedule an appointment with our functional medicine specialist, Dr. Matthew Marcotte.