Functional medicine aims to restore a state of health through a joint approach that takes into account the connections between the physiological, biochemical and psychic components of the body. Let's find out the method and the benefits.
What is functional medicine?
Functional medicine is a branch of medicine that aims at restoring the normal, physiological functions of the organism, paying particular attention to the factors that are believed or suspected to be at the origin of pathological processes. This methodology makes it possible to intervene before the onset of the disease or to reduce its consequences.
The focus of functional medicine is indeed the cause or causes of "functional disorders" rather than their symptoms. Each manifestation of the organism, physiological or pathological, is read as a "functional" event that must be taken into consideration to restore a state of well-being. In particular, it involves pushing the body to activate its own regulation mechanisms, through which it is able to react to stressors and compensate them. The functional approach is neither alternative nor in conflict with curative medicine, of which it fully observes the principles and guidelines.
Focusing on primary prevention, functional medicine aims to expand the adequacy of the therapeutic intervention by privileging the overall vision of the individual, and evaluating the problems related to lifestyle, nutrition and chronic-degenerative diseases, which are today widely spread. For functional medicine, the right therapeutic protocol takes into account man of the different components of our health:
* Anatomical
* Physiological
* Biochemical
How functional medicine works
For functional medicine, each patient is a subject with specific characteristics, for which a tailor-made therapy must therefore be formulated, which integrates the treatment tools of traditional medicine with other complementary therapeutic techniques. These include:
* Osteopathy
* Phytotherapy
* Acupuncture
* Homeopathy
* Orthomolecular medicine
Thanks to the variety of diagnostic and therapeutic models it uses, functional medicine offers the possibility of intervening on the deep root of a disorder and obtaining results that the pharmacological approach alone is often unable to achieve.
To formulate the best cure, functional medicine also decides not to focus on the symptom, but to trace the causes of a problem by reconstructing the patient's history and experiences that over the years may have contributed to altering his psychophysical harmony.
What is treated with functional medicine?
The challenge of functional medicine is to make a difference where conventional medicine is struggling to have concrete and long-term efficacy. Think of systemic problems such as:
* Chronic diseases (cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and immune system)
* Food allergies and intolerances
* Autoimmune Diseases
* Psychological and behavioral disorders
* Degenerative pathologies
All of these disorders have increased enormously in frequency in recent decades and now represent the greatest threat to health for a large part of the population. Thanks to advances in biomedical research, the effectiveness of treatments has increased with a consequent lengthening of the lifespan. Medicine, on the other hand, has not been able to make an effort to simultaneously reduce the frequency and burden of these diseases.
The consequence is that people live longer but with chronic diseases, therefore the burden of suffering, dependence and disability that afflicts in the last 20-25 years of life has increased. The goal of functional medicine is to recognize the warning signs of future damage and to intervene appropriately, generally through more or less extensive lifestyle modifications.