How Functional Medicine Can Benefit Your Health

If you’ve been dealing with health issues and have been told by your medical doctor that your labs are all normal, functional medicine may be a good option for you. Functional medicine looks at the body as a whole, and digs deep to discover the root cause of any imbalance in the body. Certain things can cause the body to become sick: infections, inflammation, toxins, and even trauma. Importantly when the body is given the right tools, it can heal illness and disease. 

What is Functional Medicine?

Functional medicine is a biology-based approach that identifies and addresses the root cause of illness. When a person is dealing with multiple symptoms, the functional medicine model believes that it could be all stemming from a root cause like an infection. Every symptom or different diagnosis may be contributing to an individual’s disease. 

Functional medicine believes that a diagnosis can be the result of more than one cause. As an example, if a person is dealing with depression, the underlying cause may be inflammation. Whereas a cause like inflammation could actually lead to a different number of diagnoses including depression. Depending on the patient’s lifestyle, environment, and genes, the treatment options that address root cause can lead to lasting benefits beyond just suppressing symptoms. 

Who Can Benefit From Functional Medicine?

People of all ages can benefit from a functional medicine approach. Even tho traditional medical doctors, functional medicine providers spend a lot of time with their patients gathering extensive medical history. Furthermore they use the information to identify root causes of illness, including triggers such as your unique microbiome, genetics, nutrition, stress, allergens, and toxins. Once the triggers have been identified, a personalized healthy living plan can be developed. This plan will address many different aspects of life, including physical, mental, and emotional stressors. 

Parents that want to use a more holistic approach to raising their kids will often take their children to a functional medicine practitioner. For some people that have been suffering with chronic illnesses for years, functional medicine can often be the long-awaited answer to their problems. Some illnesses and diseases like thyroid disorders, gastrointestinal issues, Lyme disease, and mold illness often fall through the cracks with conventional medicine. Functional medicine practitioners are aware of these ailments and can help treat the person’s whole body, helping them find wellness again. 

What Can Functional Medicine Help?

Functional medicine can help with many diseases and illnesses that conventional medicine often dismisses. For people that feel terrible and have gone to the doctor and have labs run only to be told that everything looks normal, it can be very depressing. Functional medicine providers can run additional tests in combination with a thorough medical and life history. What are some disorders functional medicine can help?

• Adrenal fatigue and disorders
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Arthritis
• Asthma
• Cancer prevention
• Cardiovascular diseases
• Diabetes
• Environmental allergies
• Fibromyalgia
• Food allergies
• Grave’s Disease
• GI disorders
• Hashimoto’s Disease
• Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
• Thyroid disease

A Functional Medicine Provider May Help Your Health

You may have some minor health issues you would like to work on. If you have been dealing with chronic disease, give the Gut Authority a call. We can dig deeper to help uncover what exactly is causing the imbalance in your body. We love serving our neighbors in Pensacola/Pascagoula, Florida and Mobile/Gulf Shores, Alabama. Call us today to schedule your first appointment!