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    What is Functional Medicine?

The medicine of why.

Functional medicine aims to address the root causes of disease. It seeks to strengthen the body and improve health and wellbeing for the long term.

Put simply, functional medicine asks why someone became ill, and whether those causes can be tackled. It is highly personalised – the goal is to understand each person’s unique health story, and act accordingly.

Why is it called ‘functional medicine’?

Functional medicine aims to optimise the body’s physiology – its ‘function’.

Functional medicine is based on the premise that if some body systems are functioning poorly, disease may result. If function can be supported through nutrition or lifestyle change, symptoms may improve or resolve entirely. Diet, activity, stress, and lifestyle all have a huge impact on how well the body functions.

Importantly, functional medicine aims to understand the entire body. There are strong connections between different body systems, and so functional deficits can have surprising consequences. For example, an increasing amount of research connects digestive function to neurological symptoms like brain fog, low mood or anxiety.  

A functional medicine approach aims to identify and address these root causes, rather than focussing on the symptoms themselves. All systems are considered connected, and each person is understood as a complete whole.

Why do we need functional medicine?

Rates of many chronic diseases have escalated alarmingly in the Western world. Most are linked to diet and lifestyle – but online self-help information is confusing and contradictory.

Many people find themselves struggling to deal with the long-term impact of chronic symptoms, and not understanding if there is anything they can do to help themselves.

Functional medicine is specifically designed to provide this support. It aims to identify straightforward lifestyle changes, which should improve health and decrease the burden of disease.

What are the differences between functional and conventional medicine?

Functional medicine and conventional medicine should work together – they are complementary. Both apply medical research in a different way.
  • Functional medicine supports the physiological functions necessary for health.
  • Conventional medicine is primarily targeted towards treating the symptoms and consequences of diseases.

Functional medicine is specifically designed to ask why a disease is occurring. For example, if someone is suffering from digestive discomfort, the first question is why that is happening, and how to address the cause, rather than how to treat the symptoms.

Of course, conventional medicine does look for causes too. But functional medicine has a much greater focus on underlying causes – and so it places more emphasis on dietary and lifestyle trends that may influence diseases and symptoms.

Functional Medicine and Nutritional Therapy

Functional Medicine and Nutritional Therapy

Where Functional Medicine is the philosophy underlying our clinic, Nutritional Therapy is the practice.

In Nutritional Therapy, a practitioner will take a lot of time to listen and understand the story of a client’s health. Specialist tests may be recommended, if appropriate. The practitioner and client then work collaboratively to build a targeted plan of nutrition and lifestyle change. 

The approach is based on understanding root causes, and the aim is to help transform health.

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