What Is The Difference Between Functional Medicine And Integrative Medicine – In an effort to help demystify functional and holistic medicine and welcome you to what we do here at Maasklinik, we share a deep dive into these practices and how they can help you lead an optimally healthy lifestyle.
“Functional medicine is 100% personalized for you. It is the ability to understand that each individual is at a biochemical level. Functional medicine is an in-depth scientific study of the individual biochemistry and biophysics of a person with the aim of improving their biology.”
What Is The Difference Between Functional Medicine And Integrative Medicine
Unlike traditional medicine, the functional approach is a deep dive into you as a person. When it comes to functional medicine, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. We appreciate that you are unique and so is your biochemistry.
Conventional, & Complementary Medicine
Through a wide range of tests and a careful study of your lifestyle (more on that below), we’ve put together an overview of your life as it is now, including any problems. This helps us develop an individual approach to your wellness program.
We use nutrition, supplements and lifestyle changes to help you achieve optimal vitality. Our approach is holistic, natural and unwaveringly thorough.
We are on the verge of forensics when it comes to discovering the various aspects of your lifestyle and how it affects your health. In fact, Lawrence loves the investigative side of medicine so much that he often tells us he would have been a detective in another life!
Here at Maaskliniek, we consider it essential to work both functionally and holistically.
Functional Medicine Application
While we can monitor toxins, enzyme defects, hormone deficiencies and more on a functional level, we also need to understand your lifestyle.
“It’s about using all possible natural means, both diagnostic and therapeutic, to try to push our biochemistry into the optimal zone.”
Functional and integrated medicine differs from conventional medicine in many ways. We address the root cause of your problem or illness, not just the symptoms you’re experiencing right now.
Your first consultation lasts a minimum of 75 minutes, so you have plenty of time to go over everything with you. As soon as you start working with us, we will guide you through the entire treatment process. On average, you will see Lawrence every 2-3 months and our nutritionists will see you every week. We take excellent care of you every step of the way and strive for great results.
Reasons Functional Medicine Is The Only Medicine You Want
Technology is currently being developed to give people the knowledge they need to treat themselves at home or at work.
Our in-house futurist Lawrence believes this technology will help patients become their own doctors.
As you may have guessed, here at Maasklinik we are committed to solving the health problems of our customers and our main goal is to help them achieve optimal health.
At Maaskliniek, we focus on a treatment plan that is as natural as possible. All of the specific vitamins, minerals, herbs and natural herbal supplements we recommend are the highest quality products available on the market and contain only the purest pharmaceutical grade nutrients. Coming from food companies that only sell products to doctors, the effectiveness of each product is guaranteed.
Functional And Integrative Medicine
That said, drugs are sometimes a good tool to use, and Lawrence is able to identify drugs that may benefit the patient. They can then discuss the options with their GP before making a decision.
You can study traditional Chinese medicine, which is diagnostic, or osteopathy, which is also diagnostic. You can also explore pedicures or naturopathy.
Laurence actually trained first as an osteopathic doctor, followed by degrees in homeopathy, dietetics and herbology, and finally a six-year doctorate in integrative medicine. He attributes the final chapter of his research, a doctorate in integrative medicine, to raising the level of his ambitions. Functional medicine is a systems approach that combines modern medical testing and diagnosis with the safety and efficacy of natural treatments and therapies.
Functional medicine does not ask, “What disease do you have and what medicine should you take?” but, “Why do you have these symptoms and how can we address the underlying causes and optimize your health?”
How Is Functional Medicine Different To Conventional Medicine?
To understand the differences between functional medicine and conventional medicine, you need to understand the specific goals of care.
You may not notice water running into the canoe at first, but it is definitely a problem. This is the first error of conventional medicine; he really cares about problems when they are really bad.
This is why a person can go from healthy to having a sudden heart attack and die the next day.
As with any serious chronic condition, a leak in the canoe will eventually become a serious problem. And it is at this point that it is important to save water.
The Paradigm Shift: Functional Medicine As True Healthcare
Removing the water will prevent the canoe from sinking, but if there are still leaks, you will have little success trying to survive. Removing the water is like treating the symptom.
Conventional medicine focuses on treating our symptoms (water rising) and not the cause (actual leakage) of our problems.
Rather than optimizing well-being through preventive and restorative treatments and strategies, it focuses on managing disease once it has occurred by suppressing symptoms with prescription drugs or surgery.
One of the best examples of treating an illness instead of providing actual medical care is when someone has high blood pressure.
What Is Personal Medicine?
If you have high blood pressure, your regular doctor will probably prescribe medication to lower it. Research into the causes of high blood pressure is rarely done in the first place.
Even if your doctor recommends changing your diet or other lifestyle factors, prescription drugs remain the main treatment.
There is definitely a time and place for prescription drugs; the problem is that we based our entire healthcare system on their agreement.
And if you create a health care system that is completely dependent on drugs, you will never get to the root of the problem. Medicines almost never address the root causes of a disease or health problem. Worse, prescription drugs not only mask symptoms, they suppress vital health functions. This means that you can reduce one flag but trade it for something else.
How Are Herbalism And Functional Medicine Different?
By treating our health problems with drugs and never addressing the real cause of the health condition, the traditional model of care has created patients for life.
Functional medicine, on the other hand, is focused on health. A functional doctor tries to prevent the disease in the first place, and once it occurs, he tries to eliminate it by investigating the cause. In this way, doctors and functional medicine practitioners act as health researchers, not as a fast-track cleaning team.
In functional medicine, patients are encouraged to take an active role in their own health and treatment, as behavior is one of the most important factors in the development of chronic diseases. Health depends on the person and his decisions, not on the doctor who visits the patient.
More importantly, functional medicine understands that the patient is their own best doctor. This means that we are all individual and need an individual approach.
Functional Nutrition — On Your Mark Nutrition
Since traditional medicine focuses on the doctor or “expert”, you will find that there are many specialists and specialties that traditional medicine is based on.
That’s why you can go from doctor to doctor, get prescription after prescription, and nothing will ever be reviewed consistently under one roof.
So your health depends more on which specialist you see next than how you get better.
Functional medicine practitioners understand that we are all biochemically and genetically different. Everyone will respond differently to treatment, including diet, supplements, lifestyle and medications.
Integrative, Holistic, Alternative, And Functional Medicine Atlanta
Does a teenage boy buy the same clothes as a 65-year-old woman? Probably not. But if they both get sick, they will most likely receive the same treatment, despite their obvious differences.
High blood pressure patients are given high blood pressure medication. Patients with high cholesterol are given high cholesterol medication. Immunosuppressants are given to autoimmune patients and antidepressants to depressed patients.
To provide individualized treatment, functional medicine uses a highly sensory and cutting-edge approach to determine the best course of action for each individual (not necessarily their medical condition).
Our growing understanding of genetics, genomics, and how the environment influences DNA expression—and how all of this drives health, disease, and response to treatment—allows functional physicians to provide better prevention and personalized treatment.
Becoming A Functional Medicine Evangelist From Inside Out
It starts with diving deep into a person’s health history to really listen to what’s going on in your life. It almost always involves a comprehensive analysis of diet, lifestyle and current blood test results; things that are rarely discussed in a 10-15 minute conversation with a regular doctor.
And once the doctor determines the correct procedure, it doesn’t end there. Functional medicine doctors will reassess your condition over and over again and continually adjust and refine your treatment plan.
Reactive health care involves responding to adverse symptoms, illnesses, and injuries. You are generally considered healthy if you have no symptoms.
Initiative