What is Functional Medicine (FM)? This is an important question for you to understand so you can start living a life of wellness, fitness, and longevity.

If you’ve seen the Broadway play “Hamilton,” or any production for that matter, you will understand the analogy to FM. Consider your current overall health and wellness as the initial concept of the play. Here, you have a blank slate on which to develop your future health and wellness.

FM begins by looking at all the important influences of your life – from before your birth until present and records all the issues, bumps, illnesses, life events, etc., that have shaped you to this point.

This is not unlike how a playwright, casting director, set designer, choreographer, musical score producer, and director look at their ideas, expectations, and cast’s experiences to develop a completed production.

Once the script has been written, the cast has been assembled, the director needs to find the best approach at formulating a successful play. This is what a Functional Medicine practitioner will do for you — develop a plan to improve your health, wellness, and longevity by adapting all your experiences, influences, lifestyle choices, illnesses, and exposures into a workable plan to achieve your best self!

The Functional Medicine practitioner will work with a team of integrative care specialists, nutritional and exercise coaches, laboratory services, and your traditional physicians to orchestrate your successful care path to wellness.

Historically, 90 percent of all health care and wellness issues in our modern society are chronic illnesses: diabetes, cancer, stomach and intestinal disorders, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s dementia, autoimmune conditions, asthma, obesity, arthritis, and many others.

Unfortunately, these conditions are all on the rise. Consider that over 70% of the US population is overweight or obese, nearly 60% are pre-diabetic or diabetic, and 20% will develop dementia!

This is a devastating indictment of our health care system, especially if you consider that the US spends the greatest amount of health care resources in the world to care for its citizens.

Unlike the Traditional or Western Model of healthcare — a model that ultimately places a bandaid on chronic health concerns — FM takes a holistic and systems approach to look at your life and health and seeks to get at the root cause of illness and “dis-ease.”

Just as a play has many chapters, so do you, and we are all, in essence, the total of our life experiences, beliefs, and situations. FM is unique in that it looks at the totality of your life through detailed questionnaires and uses these tools to dig down to the foundation of your physiology to answer “why” you are not as healthy or balanced as you want.

Inflammation is the underlying root cause of nearly all chronic health conditions. Unfortunately, traditional medicine fails to address this fact. Consider hypertension as an example of how the current model of health care fails its mission of promoting wellness.

First, the method of measuring BP is uniformly and poorly done. Errant readings are the norm. This either triggers a follow-up visit or, tragically, a trial of a pharmaceutical drug to “lower” the numbers. Sadly, this often leads to more error readings by different observers, unnecessary testing, more office visits, a “hypertension” diagnosis that increases insurance premiums, and in many cases a neverending cycle of higher dosages, new medications, and complications or side effects requiring additional drugs…all because there wasn’t someone to step on the brakes and ask “WHY!”

A Functional Medicine specialist will ask the “WHY” question and will do a deep dive into the many facets of lifestyle, nutrition, connection, activities, toxins, exposures, stressors, mediators, and triggers that might explain the elevated blood pressure.

“Name and Tame” is the Western Medical model approach to health care, whereas FM seeks to learn the root cause and foundational reasons for the imbalance.

Functional Medicine is about finding your BALANCE!

Balance is achieved by looking at your lifestyle, diet, beliefs, life experiences, prior illnesses, family history, environmental exposures, previous or current medications, use of antibiotics, stressors, and pinpoint testing to find the keys to allowing your body to heal and repair as it was intended.

Much like the director who, while looking at each actor, molds the unique theatrical experiences, movements, tonality, charisma, timing, and motivations portrayed, to bring the writer’s character to life on stage.

Think of how different and unimaginative the production of “Hamilton” would be if the headliner was written as a one-dimensional character? This is is what we see in traditional medical care.

Further, with the specialization of medicine, you, as a “hypertension” patient, might be referred to a cardiologist, endocrinologist, nephrologist, interventional radiologist, and internist just to work up your labeled disease!

Each of the specialists will look through a very narrow lens, often getting redundant tests, prescribing new pharmaceuticals that interact with your current ones, and ultimately failing to look at the entirety of your situation — inevitably, your appointments are rushed, often without compassion or understanding, and at an incredible cost.

Going back to the Broadway play analogy, it would be akin to each supporting actor doing his own concept of the script in isolation from the others.

Functional Medicine is different. Your appointments are decidedly longer, unhurried, comprehensive, planned, guided by your circumstances and not the provider’s rushed schedule, educational, and two dimensional — like a relaxed dialog.

The audience becomes engaged, entertained, and intimately involved when all the facets of a professional theatrical production comes together — the actors synergistically play off each others strengths, the set becomes a believable backdrop, the supporting characters bring a depth to the leads and stage experience, the orchestra is in tune and melodically draws you closer to the intentions of the playwright — until the final refrain is played, leaving you standing at center stage, cheering, excited and wanting for more.

Okay, this was a little over the top, but it highlights the satisfaction clients feel when they are finally understood and heard. Functional Medicine is a scripted and choreographed series of experiences that empowers you to take control of your health and wellness journey with a knowledgable and trusted guide.

It is what Hippocrates envisioned for the interaction between a healer and his charge.

Take your life and health back, and begin living the life you dreamed of and deserve!