by Reine DuBois, Naturopath and Clinical Director
Functional medicine is a method of medicine that considers the interaction of all the systems of the body – looking at the patient and how they are presenting inside of their entire health complaint – not just the individual parts (symptoms). Functional medicine assesses how the body is functioning and uses a range of diagnostic tests and modalities to understand the drivers (underlying causes) of the patient’s condition. Functional medicine understands that no one treatment protocol will work for everyone with the same condition and attempts to understand the complexity of the patient’s unique biochemistry, genotyping, life and environmental stressors both structurally and emotionally.
Functional medicine understands intimately the connection between the circulatory system, nervous system, respiratory system, digestive system, skeletal system and muscular system. As such, a good integrative team practicing functional medicine will be meeting regularly to discuss the intricacies of a patient and will consist of practitioners such as doctors, psychologist, osteopaths, naturopaths, acupuncturists and nurses. The team needs to have developed a common language so they can share their findings in a patients care allowing a clear understanding of the order of the treatments to be used to address the drivers of an individual’s condition.
Functional medicine practitioners understand that one cause can lead to many different conditions. We know that drivers like inflammation may have a similar cause (like infection) but can present as different conditions (like diabetes). A functional medicine practitioner works towards restoring normal body functions, we know that if we restore normal body function that many disease processes clear up.
The Health Lodge Integrated Medicine Centre is one of Australia’s only functional medicine clinics that runs biweekly team meetings, supporting our patients to achieve their health goals combining our skills from all the different modalities, merging our knowledge and understanding of the different systems of the body creating a direction of treatment that will support you on your path back to health.
Book in a free 15 min session with Reine DuBois our clinical director to see if our team for functional medicine practitioners can be of support.
