Addressing Disease at Its Core
By Dr. Vince Sferra
Functional Medicine (FM) has developed over the past couple of decades as an approach in medicine that goes beyond a disease-oriented, symptoms-based approach to patient care. Realizing that there are always mechanisms that drive the disease process, FM seeks to uncover the underlying processes that contribute to and create dysfunctions, conditions, and potential disease. This includes chronic diseases such as diabetes and arteriosclerosis, and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Celiac, and autoimmune thyroiditis (Hashimoto’s). It also includes many gastrointestinal syndromes such as IBS, SIBO, gastritis, and GERD.
These diseases, as well as cognitive decline syndromes (dementia in its early stages) and other neurologic disorders such as MS, and even some cancers, are almost always preceded by a lengthy period of declining function and health in one or more body systems. For most of us, these syndromes and conditions are the result of life-long interactions with our environment, lifestyle, and genetics (newly termed, your ‘exposome’). Ideally, functional medicine is utilized by a skilled FM doctor to identify and ameliorate dysfunctions in the physiology and biochemistry of the human body as a primary method of improving patient health, optimally before an actual diagnosis of a disease.
A functional medicine doctor recognizes that each patient represents a unique, complex, and interwoven web of interactions that create the terrain for health or disease (again: your exposome). With this approach, we assess core clinical imbalances, fundamental physiological processes, environmental inputs, and genetic predispositions in a highly individualized, patient-care model.
Examples of core clinical imbalances include blood sugar dysregulation, digestive system imbalances, chronic un-tempered stress responses, inactive lifestyle, toxic burden, sleep problems, poor diet, insufficient nutrient status, or immune hypersensitivities to regularly chosen foods. These are some of the most common drivers of disease and dysfunction. The FM model of patient care requires extensive investigation utilizing diagnostic tools such as blood work and imaging, physical examination, comprehensive health history and system review questionnaires, toxic exposure assessment, status of one’s stress and its management, sleep patterns, and genetic predispositions.
Once these individual drivers of disease are identified in a patient, the FM doctor makes recommendations for diet and nutrition and provides natural therapeutic interventions, which are lifestyle-based in most cases. The goal is to eliminate the driving forces of any imbalance and fortify the body’s efforts to rebuild and heal. If we only treat the symptoms, these factors will continue to be drivers for imbalance and lead to further advancement of dysfunction and disease. The functional medicine approach is not only ideal for disease prevention but also to arrest, and possibly even reverse, the progression of chronic disease.
Functional medicine is a process-oriented approach to healthcare. A patient in the functional medicine model is not a passive entity, but rather an integral team player in the quest to regain health and become strong again. This healthcare model meets a deep need for not only optimizing individual health but also for raising the health of our communities.
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