What does Personalized Healthcare Mean for Me?
Functional Medicine - Finding the "Root Cause"
The Institute for Functional Medicine (FM) defines Functional Medicine as:
“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. One condition may have many causes, or one cause may lead to many conditions”
Simply put, FM is looking at the body in its entirety rather than from a singular systems approach (like endocrinology, cardiology, gastroenterology, etc.) Instead, we’re interested in how all of these systems function together. Oftentimes, when one system or pathway is out of balance, it can have greater impacts throughout the entire body.
A Personalized Approach
It’s like having an internal detective. There are many complex interactions that take place within the body and many of them overlap. With an understanding of the entanglement of biochemistry, physiology, psychology, nutrition, genetics/epigenetics, and environmental inputs, we can connect the dots that are resulting in your particular health issues.
Every person is different, and when we respect the individuality of each person, we can begin to address health from a personalized approach. There are no one-size-fits-all programs, only tailored healthcare specific to each patient’s needs.
How do You Define "Personalized"?
Everything is relevant when it comes to your health, all the way back to when you were a fetus still in the womb, to current day, and all things in between. We will begin with gathering detailed information about your life experiences, emotional events, mental health state, medical history, comprehensive symptom analysis, and blood work.
While blood work is essential for understanding your internal environment, we believe in addressing the person, not just your labs. We run only the basics, saving you thousands in unnecessary testing.
Our interventions start by addressing just the highest-priority areas of health as oftentimes correcting the more “upstream” imbalances helps to restore balance to other issues. Thus resulting in minimal supplement use and nutrition interventions that are both sustainable and effective.
