Traditional forms of medicine were, by nature, holistic. But in the past century, conventional medicine has mainly focused on the physical aspects of illness, breaking the body up into parts to be dealt with in isolation by specialists who concentrate on disease and dysfunction. Their focus on disease—rather than health—has informed how medicine is practiced and patients are treated.
Integrative and functional medicine bring the focus back to patients and their health and healing. The surge in popularity of these modalities suggests that patients are drawn to this new (or very old) approach.
What Is Integrative Medicine?
Treating the Whole Person
Integrative medicine uses an evidence-based approach to treat the whole person—body, mind, and spirit. A patient’s physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs are addressed as each is considered integral to overall health and well-being.Integrative medicine uses a combination of approaches from different disciplines to achieve healing that is specific to each patient.
“Integrative medicine is the intelligent combination of conventional and alternative medicine.”
“In essence, [it] is trying to restore the focus of medicine on health and healing away from disease symptom management.
“It emphasizes whole-person medicine, meaning that we are more than just physical bodies—we are minds, spirits, and community members.
“It looks at all aspects of lifestyle—it emphasizes the importance of the practitioner–patient relationship to the healing practice. And then it is willing to look at all methods—from whatever tradition they come from that may be of value in treating disease—that is the alternative piece.”
A Combination of Disciplines and Therapies
Integrative medicine uses lifestyle changes and approaches from a variety of healing traditions to treat each aspect of the patient. The type of therapy chosen is based on its strengths and effectiveness for each patient’s specific health needs.Patient–Practitioner Relationship
A vital aspect of integrative medicine is that it places particular importance on the relationships between the patients and their health care practitioners, as they are seen as equal partners in the healing process. In these patient–practitioner relationships, the patient’s engagement is crucial, as they and the practitioner work together to achieve a unified goal—healing, maintenance, or prevention.Coordinated Care
The aim of integrative medicine is for the patient to receive well-coordinated care, with all practitioners working together toward the same goal. This organized approach ensures that each practitioner knows what other treatments the patient is receiving, recognizes their benefits, and can build on them to aid the healing process. Working together and with open communication ensures that the patient gets the best care possible and that every practitioner treating him or her is aware and supportive of the other treatments.
Integrative medicine is also known by other names, including alternative medicine, complementary medicine, and holistic medicine, but more and more people have shifted to using the term “integrative medicine” today. Since the practice can include general practitioners, including medical specialists, it can be confusing to simply call it “alternative.”
Because of its openness to a variety of treatment types and focus on patient-centered care, integrative medicine has been steadily growing in popularity, especially in the past 20 years.
What Is Functional Medicine?
The main objective of functional medicine is to identify and treat the root cause of illness.Functional medicine practitioners are more focused on dietary and lifestyle interventions to promote health and healing than medications or surgery. They also consider factors such as genetics and hormonal changes as potential causes and treatments for diseases.
Like integrative medicine practitioners, functional medicine practitioners take a holistic approach to their patients—treating all aspects—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—as each affects health and well-being. Each patient receives individualized treatment for his or her unique set of circumstances.
Treatments are aimed at lifestyle habits, natural supplements, and complementary therapies.
Functional medicine works in tandem with conventional medicine, and its strength is in treating chronic, complex, or multilayered conditions that conventional medicine hasn’t been able to diagnose or treat effectively.
“Functional medicine is a systems biology-based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or differential diagnosis may be one of many contributing to an individual’s illness,” The Institute of Functional Medicine’s website reads.
Specific Lab Testing
An initial appointment with a functional medicine doctor usually involves taking a detailed medical history including many questions about the state of your health and your life overall. The doctor will also request specific lab testing to see how well your body is functioning. This in-depth lab testing is one of the things that makes functional medicine different. Lab testing and a more thorough intake process are what help functional doctors get to the root of any health issue.
- Comprehensive stool tests (regarding digestion, absorption, and the gut microbiome and for worms, parasites, and bacteria)
- Saliva and urine tests (to understand hormone and metabolite levels)
- Breath tests (for hydrogen or methane to rule out small intestinal bacterial overgrowth)
- Blood tests (to see what’s happening at the cellular level)
How Are These Modalities Similar?
Integrative and functional medicine share many fundamental ideas. Both systems are also concerned with finding root causes rather than treating symptoms, which makes them better equipped to handle complex conditions than other kinds of medicine.Because of their holistic approach and interest in root causes, both integrative and functional medicine offer individualized treatments, which are often more effective.
For example, if someone goes to a conventional Western doctor with a diagnosis of depression, the treatment will likely be medications such as antidepressants. But an integrative or functional medicine doctor will be more interested in the cause of the depression. This means that patients will be treated for the unique set of circumstances that led to their depression instead of receiving the same treatment as everyone who is depressed.
What these two systems also have in common is their emphasis on lifestyle, nutrition, and behavioral changes over medications and procedures, making them a more natural approach for those wishing to avoid more drastic interventions and potential side effects.
Both also emphasize the relationship between practitioner and patient. Because integrative and functional medicine doctors investigate much further to learn about patients and the state of their health, trust between patient and practitioner is improved. And patient engagement and participation is vital for many of the treatments these doctors may recommend, such as taking up yoga, changing one’s diet, or keeping a journal.
What Are the Differences?
The main way that integrative and functional medicine differ is in their approach.Integrative medicine focuses more on the needs of each aspect (mind, body, and spirit) to heal the unified whole using a variety of disciplines and treatments.
Renewed Interest
Sixty percent of American adults now have a chronic disease, and 40 percent have two or more. Conventional medicine undoubtedly saves lives, and advances in medicine are responsible for improvements in many areas, but these statistics are a sobering reminder that many people are suffering.Integrative and functional medicine offer a full-spectrum approach that empowers patients, focuses on root causes, and promotes health using changes in lifestyle and treatments from a variety of disciplines.
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