An Introduction to Functional Medicine
Functional Medicine is central to the approach at SAVI Nutrition. Here I explain a little bit about the Functional Medicine approach from my personal perspective.
When you think about health do you think about whether you are healthy or sick? Or do you think about health more as a sliding scale?
The reality is not a straightforward choice between healthy and sick. You can experience a sudden, acute illness and go from being healthy to being very sick. Some illnesses can develop slowly, over a number of years, and an individual will gradually feel less and less healthy until they realise that something is not right. They are somewhere on a scale between sick and healthy.
Often our public health systems are geared towards the sick/healthy approach. Health messages tell us how to stay healthy and when we are sick we seek medical advice and treatment. But does this treatment always get to the root cause? Are there underlying issues that remain hidden that will lead to further health problems?
Functional Medicine works with the sliding scale or continuum model. It recognises that long term health conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, thyroid problems and irritable bowel syndrome develop over time. These long term conditions are a result of a number of different factors coming together and you have been less than healthy long before disease symptoms start to show.
Within a conventional healthcare system you may have felt below par and sought medical advice. You may have had tests that came back ‘within the normal range’. In a ten minute appointment your doctor almost certainly won’t have had the time to be able to go into everything that is going on in your life, your lifestyle, your environment, to put you on the path to optimum health.
The reality is not a straightforward choice between healthy and sick. You can experience a sudden, acute illness and go from being healthy to being very sick. Some illnesses can develop slowly, over a number of years, and an individual will gradually feel less and less healthy until they realise that something is not right. They are somewhere on a scale between sick and healthy.
Often our public health systems are geared towards the sick/healthy approach. Health messages tell us how to stay healthy and when we are sick we seek medical advice and treatment. But does this treatment always get to the root cause? Are there underlying issues that remain hidden that will lead to further health problems?
Functional Medicine works with the sliding scale or continuum model. It recognises that long term health conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, thyroid problems and irritable bowel syndrome develop over time. These long term conditions are a result of a number of different factors coming together and you have been less than healthy long before disease symptoms start to show.
Within a conventional healthcare system you may have felt below par and sought medical advice. You may have had tests that came back ‘within the normal range’. In a ten minute appointment your doctor almost certainly won’t have had the time to be able to go into everything that is going on in your life, your lifestyle, your environment, to put you on the path to optimum health.
To help explain the difference with the Functional Medicine approach to health and disease I would like to introduce you to the idea of the Functional Medicine Tree. Sat centrally where the trunk forks into branches are the signs and symptoms that you present with. The starting point for a consultation. The branches represent the different organs and systems in the body. Of equal importance are the trunk and roots which represent family history, events and pathogens that may have acted as triggers in an episode of illness, and lifestyle and environmental factors. A Functional Medicine practitioner will take all of this into account when thinking about how to improve your health. Functional Medicine understands that your whole body is connected, that you can’t look at one system or organ and ignore the whole.
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To understand the impact of symptoms Functional Medicine practitioners use a tool called the Functional Medicine Matrix. Here is an example of what this part of the matrix looks like:
I’ll give you an example of how this works in practice. I was visited in clinic by a 58 year old woman - I’ll call her Susan – who was seeking help to alleviate constipation. Susan wanted some advice on changes to her diet. I would map her constipation against assimilation on the matrix because this area contains the digestive system. Susan is also on medication. |
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The way her body responds to her medication will be affected by her constipation – I map this against Biotransformation and elimination on the matrix as this is where detoxification of medication sits. Is this having on impact on Susan’s health? She also has hormone issues – constipation can impair hormone clearance from the body. I therefore map constipation under communication too as this is the area representing hormones. You can see how a more complete picture starts to be built up of the impact constipation may be having on Susan’s health.
This approach seeks to get to the root cause Susan’s illness/imbalances.
What is causing Susan’s constipation? It could be her diet, and I could advise her to make some changes to see whether this helps to alleviate her symptoms. However, Susan is also complaining of weight gain, tiredness, fatigue and mind fog. This could possibly indicate an underactive thyroid. As a Nutritional Therapist it is not my role to diagnose or treat – I recommend Susan checks this out with her doctor.
This approach seeks to get to the root cause Susan’s illness/imbalances.
What is causing Susan’s constipation? It could be her diet, and I could advise her to make some changes to see whether this helps to alleviate her symptoms. However, Susan is also complaining of weight gain, tiredness, fatigue and mind fog. This could possibly indicate an underactive thyroid. As a Nutritional Therapist it is not my role to diagnose or treat – I recommend Susan checks this out with her doctor.
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In Functional Medicine terms we are still in the branches of the tree. To understand the factors that led to Susan’s symptoms we need to look to the trunk and the roots.
So what does all this mean for Susan, and for you and I, all sat somewhere in the healthy zone of the health continuum? Earlier we talked about the different factors that influence our relative risk of developing chronic diseases. Sat at the roots of the Functional Medicine Tree are the modifiable lifestyle risk factors:
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By making small changes to these lifestyle factors, building in good habits, we can edge our way further up the health continuum. Whether you visit SAVI Nutrition because you are interested in one-to-one nutrition advice, plan to attend a workshop or want to commission a bespoke programme for your organisation or community group; functional medicine will be an integral part of the approach. We will work with you to understand your lifestyle challenges and help you make those step changes to improved wellness.
To find out more on Functional Medicine visit The Institute for Functional Medicine
Kim Adams, Seed and Vine Individual Nutrition