What is Functional Medicine?
The first step of understanding Functional Medicine, is understanding the problem that led to the need of this new paradigm of healthcare.
In the 21st century, our society is seeing an epidemic of chronic disease such as diabetes, autoimmunity, chronic fatigue, chronic pain syndrome, cancers and chronic inflammatory diseases due to viruses. Fully 65% of Americans are overweight and 35% are obese. Everyone of these conditions lead to inflammation.
Toxin exposure from everyday living, poor dietary choices, poor sleep and wake patterns, lack of exercise, escalating levels of stress both in the workplace and at home, lack of meaning and purpose, and a lack of healing relationships are some of the causes of these syndromes that are not addressed by the western medicine approach to health. Instead its approach to throw a drug or procedure at the problem in a disease-care protocolized approach to health.
This approach works for acute issues that may require hospitalization, but not for chronic conditions that require a different model which incorporates today’s environmental impact on your health.
Acute care at the hospital or urgent care and daily preventive or disease-centered care are actually like different cities on a map. One cannot read the map of acute care, that is very dependent on things like keeping your vitals stable, while treating a chronically sick patient who needs a different set of modalities other than just keeping vitals stable, such as controlling inflammation or modulating hormonal resistance. It would be akin to reading the map of Chicago when you are traversing the streets of Tampa!
This system is not sustainable as the cost of our health care as a share of our GDP ( gross domestic product) rose to a whopping 20% of GDP expenditure in 2020 and is continuing to rise exponentially. For comparison in 1990, our health care cost was 13% of our GDP. We have seen our health care system topple with the 2020 covid-19 pandemic as health care is available to some and not to others, death rates rising as it was the sickest of the sick who were vulnerable to the virus.
Functional Medicine is not a new branch of medicine but a different way of thinking about the origins of disease that are common amongst all branches of medicine. A family practitioner, cardiologist or any other specialist, can use this new set of eyes to figure out the underlying reason why their patient has a specific disease.
Functional medicine is a shift in our current paradigm in that it treats you as an individual with unique exposures and genes who developed a health issue. It therefore looks at the weblike connection that your environment and lifestyle has on your health. This is done with the aid of history taking and utilizing both conventional medical testing as well as emerging innovations in testing that allows us to see patterns of disruption in any of your systems. This is the root cause approach to your medical issues. We then remove the distortions and correct your lifestyle to help you regain health.
It is very much a collaborative effort between you, the patient, and us, your health care team. As long as you are willing to make the changes, the system is geared to work as this is what nature and your body does. We are right there with you, holding your hand as you take your journey to a healthier you. At faim, your health care team with Katie and Dr. Rathod does not change over the coming years as we are invested in this together.
