Functional Medicine: Treat the person first, then the disease
Functional medicine is like a super detective, carefully collecting clues in your life, combining your medical history and symptoms to find out the possible causes of your physical discomfort. Just like solving a case, he connects all the clues together to form a map of your physical problems. For example, maybe you often eat well for one meal and casually for another, you are under a lot of stress for a long time, you are always too lazy to go to the gym, and you often don’t get enough sleep. There are so many habits that you know well but cannot change. Although you go for regular health checks every year, and the numbers don’t seem to be a big problem, your body has been uncomfortable and you feel powerless to solve the problem. At this time, functional medicine may be your savior.
Functional medicine is a map, it's a GPS system, a way of navigating through the landscape of an illness. It's the medicine that connects the dots between all the things that are going wrong in our biology. - DR. Mark Hyman
“Functional Medicine is like a map, a GPS system, that helps us navigate the maze of disease. It connects the dots between the various elements that are going wrong in our bodies and allows us to see the full picture.” Dr. Mark Hyman, a pioneer in functional medicine and former physician to President Clinton
When our bodies are damaged internally and externally, coupled with the effects of toxins in the environment, the immune system may be damaged, intestinal bacteria may be imbalanced, endocrine disorders and other problems may arise, which may eventually lead to various diseases. The so-called environmental toxins refer to the various chemicals, microorganisms, radiation and other elements that we come into contact with on a daily basis that may have a negative impact on health. These elements may come from air, water, soil, food, household items, cosmetics, plasticizers, drugs, etc. Therefore, functional medicine analyzes your lifestyle and environmental factors, and uses scientific tests that are different from traditional testing methods (such as environmental hormones and heavy metal tests) to help you find the root cause of the disease and formulate personalized health prescriptions to improve your discomfort.
You may ask, if I already have a chronic disease, can functional medicine still help me? Of course it can! The focus of functional medicine is to understand each person's potential risk of health disorders, and work with your doctor to solve the problem by rebalancing the body's basic physiological systems and adjusting the lifestyle that causes the disease. Whether medication needs to be adjusted in the end is still determined by the doctor. From complete reliance on medication control to 80% medication and 20% lifestyle adjustment, to 40% medication and 60% lifestyle adjustment. Do you think it is possible to stop medication for chronic diseases? I dare say it is absolutely possible!
Through the multifaceted testing of Functional Medicine, we are able to reduce inflammation in our bodies and restore normal function. Blood sugar, triglyceride and cholesterol levels are returning to normal, endocrine disruptions are being corrected, stubborn weight is being lost, our energy levels are significantly increased, pain and discomfort are being reduced and resolved. Brain fog is no longer present, and sleeping difficulties are improving. All of this is achieved in a natural and safe way.
