Functional Medicine is a high-performance process built on the chassis of Traditional Western Medicine. It injects the application of leading-edge science into current practice in order to accelerate the implementation of new findings for the benefit of patients.
It is a multi-modal system based approach that relies upon simultaneously optimizing the biochemical, physiological and psychophysiological elements to create pathways to health and healing. This is both more advanced and more effective than a simple reductionist approach to modifying one variable at a time.
By including focus on psychophysiologic aspects of care Functional Medicine is more advanced than care that relies only on pharmacologic or procedural intervention. At the same time, Functional Medicine is more connected to holistic healing traditions that consider the environment and entire milieu of the patient as important aspects of healing.
Functional Medicine seeks to remove the fuel that creates and sustains the fire instead of using more and more intense strategies to extinguish a roaring blaze in the body.
Functional Medicine is a new branch of medicine that seeks root causes of illness. By understanding the mechanism and processes that cause illness instead of treating a collection of symptoms a Functional Medicine approach can often succeed in finding solutions to illness.
Functional Medicine relies on creating deep therapeutic relationships between patients and providers. It uses tools that help to elucidate medical history in a new light that gives cues on how to proceed in evaluation. These insights along with other information are then woven together into a matrix that helps to define the interconnections of symptoms and issues in seemingly unconnected body systems.
For those interested in a Functional Medicine approach we use electronic versions of Functional Medicine tools including:
The Functional Medicine Timeline
The timeline identifies antecedents, triggers, and mediators of disease in the context of a person’s life:
The Functional Medicine Matrix:
The Matrix uses a systems based categorization of factors related to illness in order to define and elucidate the relationships between different factors contributing to the root cause of illness.
Both Dr. O’Neil and Dr. Sheeler are certified Functional Medicine practitioners through the world leader in Functional Medicine training – The Institute for Functional Medicine [IFM].