And how can functional medicine change your life?

Functional medicine is a healthcare discipline that treats the cause of disease. It focuses on the body as a whole and looks to restore the body’s ability to function efficiently and properly. Continue reading to know more about how functional medicine works, and how we implement it into our practice here at Vital Health and Body. 

So what does this mean? It means we don’t trade one set of symptoms for another by giving you a toxic medication which overrides your body’s function instead of repairing it.

The treatments we use are powerful and effective, and they are natural. There is no chemistry set in nature and we don’t intend to make one inside your body. We’re long past the days where the “pill for every ill” fantasy has been dispelled. Decades and decades of massively increasing prescriptions have left us sicker than ever. We lead the world in prescriptions per person, but rank 37th in overall health. It is time for a change and that change is Functional Medicine.

Is functional medicine mainstream yet?

Functional Medicine is now being practiced at places like the Mayo clinic and the Cleveland clinic, in addition to a growing trend of private practices that are meeting the increasing demand of people who are looking for a better way.

Most traditional doctors practice “this for that” medicine, meaning they find out you have “that” condition or complaint and give you “this” medication for it.  You have fatigue – take this stimulant, or you can’t sleep – take this sleeping pill.  This process does not involve any diagnostic evaluation or address the cause of the problem.  It often only temporarily relieves some symptoms while allowing the underlying cause of the problem to continue.

There’s hardly a doctor in the world that wouldn’t agree that prevention is the key, but teaching someone how to be healthy, what to eat, how to exercise, how and when to sleep and how to de-stress is much harder than giving someone a pill. There’s a shift needed in healthcare and in who is responsible for your health—it’s not your insurance company, it’s not your doctor and it’s certainly not the pharmaceutical companies. The responsibility is yours to embrace. It is timely and important for you to take responsibility for your health. Your doctor often doesn’t have any better answers than you do on what makes YOU healthy. This is an incredibly important point, and it is a big responsibility, but the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The stakes are your quality of life.

If you stay as you are, eat the same things, do the same things and don’t take your health seriously, then you can expect to add a new pill or medication on average every three years once you turn forty. If you’ve already passed that milestone then you’ve probably already started the cycle. And statistically you should expect at least one chronic disease and possibly an autoimmune disease in your future.

This appears to be the world we live in, but, it doesn’t have to be. Through functional medicine you can take back your life and your future. You can break free from the cycle of illness that’s all around you.

How does functional medicine work?

Dr. Marian’s wellness philosophy involves balancing the three body systems:

• Your hormonal system produces your sex and stress hormones;
• Your digestive system breaks down food for use by the body; and
• Your detoxification system protects you from free radicals and chemical toxicity, both from your environment and from your diet.

Almost every health issue can be traced back to a problem within one or more of your three body systems.

What can I expect at my first visit?

Your first visit to a functional medicine doctor consists of a thorough consultation, a detailed personal and family history where the primary focus is on figuring out what your most pressing problems are, and determining how to proceed. This will usually tell us which order to perform the lab tests in order to completely assess your body’s function.

We test for Adrenal function, GI health and also test for Liver function, as these three systems represent the front lines of functional medicine.

Treatment in functional medicine is focused on improving your body’s function. We work with the systems your body already has in place to take care of itself and we test them and fix them. Our bodies are incredibly complicated, and the unintended consequences of the typical medical model have worked so well that medical mistakes are now the third leading cause of death in the United States.

We work differently. Our goal is to make you as healthy as possible, not to simply blunt the symptoms of dysfunction. We do this through diet, exercise, lifestyle modifications, vitamin and mineral supplements. It’s a process, it takes some effort from you, but it is possible and to be honest it’s not even that hard. But it’s your choice, and if you’re ready, we can help you.