Functional vs. Conventional Medicine
CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE
Most medical providers in the United States practice Conventional Medicine (or Allopathic or Western Medicine), which involves diagnosing (assigning a name to a group of symptoms) and treating symptoms (often with pharmaceuticals). For example, if you are experiencing habitual headaches, your Conventional provider will likely diagnose you with migraines and prescribe you migraine medication.
FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE
Functional Medicine extends far beyond the diagnosing and treating of symptoms. Functional Medicine delves deeper into the intricacies of human physiology by identifying the unique reasons for the development of symptoms (e.g. migraines). Symptoms do not mean that your body is broken- in fact, quite the opposite! Functional Medicine holds the belief that symptoms are the body’s intelligent way of communicating with us that something is off-balance. This approach involves looking at the whole picture by investigating one’s lifestyle (nutrition, sleep, movement, stress, faith, environmental exposures, traumas, and more) and terrain (labs, specialty testing) in order to identify the imbalances. Functional Medicine honors the individual by creating a personalized treatment plan targeted to address root causes and includes lifestyle changes, supplementation, and rarely medications.