Functional Nutrition versus Functional Medicine are two health concepts thrust in the spotlight lately. What do they really mean?
The way most of us think about going to see a nutritionist is to get recommendations on the vitamins and minerals we may need, including some specific supplementation based on our activities. Often, we may go to a nutritionist to get a diet that may help address our symptoms. This is a symptom-based approach, and while a good method with likely good results, it rarely gets to the heart of the problems.
I don’t think its as much Genetics as it is lifestyle & diet, exercise & environment?
https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Testing
Part 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlxvdayxZiI
Part 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l5QARvhb38
Part 3 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxexkvfus6w
If a patient has hypothyroidism, a nutritionist might recommend an anti-inflammatory diet of some variety, iodine salts, selenium, zinc or copper, and maybe the bladderwrack herb. Of course, the list of vitamins, minerals and herbs that may help hypothyroidism symptoms is in the hundreds. The problem is the lack of individual medicine in these scenarios; determining what will work for whom is the crux of the situation.
This is often why the efficacy of natural care can be dubious. These vitamins, minerals and herbs do not cure hypothyroidism. What they do, only if necessary in a particular individual, is deal with certain deficiencies, many of which could be a part of the thyroid family of diseases. What will work for one, will do nothing for another.
True functional nutrition is another animal altogether. The overall concern is not the symptom but the actual functional prowess of the organs and glands of the body. In this view, the symptoms of low energy, hair loss, high thyroid levels, etc., are caused by the breakdown of one or more processes of the body. From this standpoint, hypothyroidism (particularly Hashimoto’s, the most common type) is often caused by dysfunction of the liver, small intestines, adrenal glands and a build-up of toxicity in the body.
Notice, I failed to mention the thyroid itself. If you have been reading my health briefs, you will understand why.
For those that haven’t: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease, meaning the dysfunction is of the immune system, which happens to live in the small intestines and Kupffer cells of the liver. But this is beyond the scope of this health brief.
The term functional medicine is just a keyword for a style of practice that truly is the ultimate in natural health care. We must nd those that are truly experienced in its practice, not just those that took a weekend course or two. In the far majority of cases, improvements with appropriate therapies should occur within four to six weeks, often regardless of how long the person has had symptoms or his/her family history. Great health and vitality are achievable.
What is Functional Nutrition?
You are unique. You have your own genetic makeup, health history, and lifestyle. Your nutrition plan should be unique to your individual body, too! Here at Root, we use functional nutrition as a key part of treating the root cause of symptoms.
But, what is functional nutrition, exactly?
In this blog, we’ll review functional nutrition, how it’s different, and how we use it to help you restore wellness, find balance in the body, and prevent disease.
First, Let’s Review: What is Functional Medicine?
To understand functional nutrition, we need to first quickly review functional medicine as a whole.
Functional medicine is an approach to treating health conditions and preventing disease by finding the root cause of your health issues. However, instead of stamping you with a diagnosis and only treating your symptoms, functional medicine doctors find out WHY you have the diagnosis. They will do an in-depth assessment to look at ALL of your body systems (not just the one causing symptoms), and evaluate how well your body is communicating.
Then, functional medicine doctors will recommend interventions to help restore balance by addressing factors such as nutrition, movement, stress, sleep, and relationships.
What is Functional Nutrition?
Functional nutrition is a powerful cornerstone to functional medicine. It uses food as a natural medicine to help restore balance, replete nutrient deficiencies, heal the gut, and more.
Here are a few ways in which functional nutrition is different from conventional practices.
Functional Nutrition is Personal
Personalization is the main difference between functional and conventional nutrition.
Functional nutrition focuses on the patient instead of the disease. It is a personalized method of optimizing your health based on your individual genetics, lab values, lifestyle, and more. There are no generic meal plans or handouts, because each individual person is different!
Let’s use a case study as an example. Imagine Mrs. M comes in to see the dietitian for nutrition counseling for her Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). She suffers from bloating, indigestion, and occasional diarrhea. In a conventional nutrition setting, Mrs. M may receive a generic low-FODMAP meal plan, which is a standardized diet that eliminates foods that may worsen symptoms in IBS patients. However, the foods are not the direct cause of her IBS, and not all IBS patients have the same reactions to all foods.
Now, let’s imagine Mrs. M’s case from a functional nutrition perspective. While each treatment is different, a functional nutrition dietitian may order personalized lab testing, like the MRT food sensitivity test, to learn how Mrs. M’s individual immune system is reacting to specific foods. They may request nutrition labs to assess underlying vitamin or mineral deficiencies. From there, they would develop a personalized elimination diet based on Mrs. M’s lab results to reduce inflammation, heal the gut, and also (of course) reduce her symptoms!
Functional Nutrition Uses Food as Medicine
A whole food diet rich in fruits, vegetables and minimal processed food is always a great foundation. However, some patients require more targeted interventions with specific foods in order to treat the underlying cause of their health issues.
Functional nutrition honors the fact that food is not only fuel for your body, but also an extremely useful tool to help us address the underlying cause of your condition. Let’s go back to Mrs. M’s story as an example. After 1-2 months of eliminating her food sensitivities, a functional dietitian may want to use specific foods or also supplements to further heal her gut. The dietitian may recommend certain anti-inflammatory foods, gut-healing compounds like glutamine or probiotics, or targeted supplements to replete any nutrient deficiencies found on her lab testing.
Functional Nutrition Is Not Just About Food
While functional nutrition honors the powerful nature of wholesome food, it also respects that there is more to health than what you eat.
For instance, a functional medicine dietitian may ask you about your stress levels, sleeping habits, and overall environment. Not only do these factors play a huge role in your overall health, but they also have a bidirectional effect on your nutrition. For example, chronic stress can worsen IBS symptoms, like in Mrs. M’s case. Additionally, your sleep habits and stress levels all affect how nutrition is digested and absorbed in the body. A functional medicine dietitian can help you establish a stress management routine to further reduce your symptoms. We may recommend various foods or also nutritional supplements to help your body cope with the added stress as well.
Embrace Your Uniqueness
With functional nutrition, we embrace your uniqueness and use it to tailor your individualized nutrition recommendations. We can use personalized lab testing, functional food as medicine, and lifestyle interventions to further your healing process. We work closely with you to find a nutrition plan that is realistic for your lifestyle, while also reducing unwanted symptoms and restoring balance in the body.
What is Integrative, Alternative, or Functional Medicine?
Written By: Oscar Cornelio-Flores, MD
Dr. Oscar Cornelio-Flores is a board certified Family Medicine physician who practices Integrative and Functional Medicine in Avance Care, Durham, NC. He graduated from an Academic Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at Boston Medical Center, and spread his work using group medical visits, mind-body approaches, nutrition, and exercise. As an active sports enthusiast, he enjoys running, biking, swimming and playing soccer; and considers food, mind, and movement as the basis for healthy living. Along with his wife, a Zumba Instructor, he lives with his 3 beautiful daughters in Chapel Hill, NC.
I am sure you have heard one of these terms: Integrative Medicine, Complementary & Alternative Medicine, or even Functional Medicine. Well, at this point you are probably confused, and I don’t blame you, as many of my patients, family or friends often ask me the same question: “What kind of medicine is this?” In the following lines, I will try to summarize what it is all this about, and most importantly, provide really interesting information that could help you get to a better state of health.
Defining Health:
Before I get started defining this kind of medical approach, let’s define what health is in the first place. You might be surprised to learn that the traditional definition of health by the World Health Organization (WHO) comes from 1948 and defines it as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
However, one of the most simple, and yet complete definitions I found was actually on Wikipedia: “health is the level of functional and metabolic efficiency of a living organism” (1). As simple as it sounds, there is so much truth behind this, considering that health is not just the absence of disease, but most importantly how we can make sure our human systems are working efficiently from the molecular/cellular level to the major organs and its relationship with the environment.
Researchers working on a new definition of health expanded a little more: “In humans it is the ability of individuals or communities to adapt and self-manage when facing physical, mental, psychological and social changes with the environment.”
Medical Approaches to Improve Health
Having the basic review of what health is about; let’s move to defining the different terms:
Alternative Medicine: When a “non-mainstream practice” is also used in place of conventional medicine. This includes a wide variety of approaches, like Acupuncture, Massage Therapy, Mind-body technique (Meditation, yoga), Chiropractic, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Reiki, or Aromatherapy, among the most common ones.
Complementary Medicine: When a “non-mainstream practice” is used together with conventional medicine. Just to clarify that “mainstream” or “conventional” practice refers to Western Medicine (use of drugs, pills and/or surgery).
Integrative Medicine: Is the use of “conventional” medicine along with different evidence-based “Alternative Medicine” approaches, and considers the whole “mind-body-spirit” components of the individual. It may sound similar to Complementary Medicine, but Integrative Medicine focuses strongly on the Provider-patient healing relationship, and goes beyond just recommending Acupuncture and using medications to reduce pain.
Functional Medicine: Similar to Integrative Medicine, Functional medicine has a “holistic” approach, but goes deeper trying to find the “root cause” of the problems, and not just using different techniques or modalities to alleviate the patients’ symptoms.
In fact, important functional medicine principles are the following:
– Every patient is a unique individual, so their conditions should be addressed in the same way.
– Science based goes deep dive into biochemistry dysfunction and genetic predisposition to certain conditions.
– Embraces an approach that focuses on systems and how dysregulation within these systems (immune, gastrointestinal, cardiometabolic, etc.) lead to chronic medical problems like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, even depression.
– Look towards self-regulation of the body, i.e. our “self-healing potential”. Yes, as esoteric as this may sound to you we all have the ability to self-regulate if some metabolic dysfunction is corrected using a better diet, exercise, supplementing vitamin efficiencies, or just improving your sleep.
The following is a very good place to look for differences between integrative and functional medicine http://blog.patronusmedical.com/functional-medicine-vs-integrative-medicine
Putting all these into Perspective:
To get the most sense and understand of all these types of holistic approaches, I invite you to think about a time where you visited your doctor and you had a great time there.
Your doctor probably listened to you, and not only your problems, but also went a mile ahead and asked you for other aspects of your life that were likely affecting your health.
Now, you also probably have been seen by another provider who did not even look at you and focused on the computer, or instead of trying to understand your condition, was just ready to hand you a prescription and let you go.
What makes the first doctor very special is the “Integrative” approach, or in simple terms what I like to call, the “good medicine” that was used.
In summary, we are human beings with physical, emotional, spiritual and environmental factors affecting our health. In the same way, we should look at solutions to improve our well being that consider all these vital aspects, and look forward not only to feeling better but also to reach our maximal potential of happiness and vitality.
Read This Article in Spanish.
Reference:
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health
(2) http://savenhshomeopathy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Huber-Definition-Health-BMJ-21.pdf
(3) The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), https://nccih.nih.gov/health/integrative-health
(4) http://blog.patronusmedical.com/functional-medicine-vs-integrative-medicine
Conventional medicine focuses on diagnosis of disease through a recognised pattern of symptoms and addressing those symptoms with medications that on the whole are the same for each patient with that given diagnosis
Recommendations from a functional medicine practitioner recognise a client’s biochemical individuality, that each person is different and one size does not fit all. It also acknowledges the mind/body/spirit connection
In fact in 1948 the World Health Organization (WHO) identified health as “a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
In conventional medicine you see doctors based on their specialties e.g. gastroenterology, endocrinology, gynaecology
Functional Medicine has a holistic approach and views all body systems as an interconnected matrix rather than separate systems.
As the graphic above shows, specific diseases such as arthritis, diabetes and fibromyalgia may be visible above the surface but the underlying cause is the altered physiology below the surface. The underlying imbalances, dysfunctions, exposures, stress load are the real causes of a person’s health issues.
“Treat the person not the disease”
At the Functional Nutrition Clinic our goal is to optimise the health and vitality of each of our clients.
Through the use of comprehensive health and lifestyle history taking, assessment of their unique biochemical factors and the results of functional laboratory testing we identify imbalances in the main body systems and the underlying causes of their chronic health issues.
It’s a patient centered approach.
Hippocrates said, “It is far more important to know what person the disease
has than what disease the person has”
This is the focus of functional medicine
FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE
CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE
Health Oriented
Disease Oriented
Patient Centred
Doctor Centre
Biochemical Individuality
Everyone treated the same way
Holistic
Specialised
Looks at underlying, root cause of disease
Diagnosis based on symptoms
The conventional model works well for acute health problems and believe me if I were to be in an accident, break my leg or suffer a heart attack I can think of no better place to be than in the A & E department of an NHS hospital
But with the rise in chronic health conditions – over 70% of the NHS budget goes on looking after those with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, obesity and heart disease – this type of model is clearly less successful.
If you have a stone in your shoe –wouldn’t it make sense to take off your shoe and remove the rock rather than take a painkiller to take away the pain it’s causing?
Surely better to find the root cause of your inflammation that is causing high cholesterol rather than just take a statin to control the cholesterol?
A great example of addressing the root cause of a chronic health issue:
I am Andrea Nakayama, a Functional Medicine Nutritionist, Educator and Speaker pioneering the movement to transform healthcare into a system that WORKS. I know that a functional nutrition approach is the answer to our healthcare crisis, both for individuals and for society at large.
I created Functional Nutrition Lab to teach practitioners of every scope the functional tools, systems, and mindset shifts that have been instrumental in my own success as a clinician.
Dr. Van D. Merkle, 1982 graduate of Logan College of Chiropractic, is a diplomate of the American Clinical Board of Nutrition and the American Board of Chiropractic Internists. He has practiced in the Dayton, Ohio area for more than 25 years, and has hosted the call-in radio talk show “Back to Health, Your Guide to Better Living” since 1995. Dr. Merkle is the president of Science-Based Nutrition . You may be asking yourself, “As a chiropractor, what could Dr. Merkle possibly do for someone with metastatic ductal cell carcinoma?” The answer lies in a series of objective and documented blood test results he uses every day in my practice to prescribe dietary and supplement regimens for patients in their journey toward better health.