Functional Medicine

Functional medicine is an advanced medical practice that utilizes advanced biochemistry, microbiology, and genetic testing in addition to standard medical tests commonly performed in hospitals. It offers a personalized treatment approach by considering an individual's genetic/epigenetic makeup (SNPs), the body's tissue-level toxicity (heavy metals, etc.), and intracellular micronutrient (vitamins, minerals, and omega-3) levels. I call functional medicine the personalized medicine of the future.

Functional medicine claims to offer a better solution for chronic inflammatory diseases that standard medical practices have not been very successful in treating completely. Chronic inflammatory diseases encompass a wide range of conditions, from cardiovascular disease and cancer to Hashimoto's thyroiditis and rheumatological disorders, from Multiple Sclerosis to allergies and asthma. Chronic inflammation is largely the underlying cause of all these diseases. Therefore, functional medicine support contributes significantly to routine standard medical treatment in all these diseases. However, functional medicine practices for these patients must be implemented in consultation with relevant specialists.

While standard medical practices focus more on differential diagnosis and identifying the disease and administering medications and surgeries that match the disease, functional medicine focuses on identifying the origin of the underlying functional disorder rather than the name or location of the disease. It uncovers the cause through advanced laboratory tests and then applies treatments to eliminate the cause. It avoids the term idiopathic (of unknown cause), commonly used in standard medicine.

In standard medical practice, a patient who consults a dermatologist for a skin rash, an endocrinologist for autoimmune thyroiditis, and a gastroenterologist for inflammatory bowel disease will receive different examination orders and prescriptions from three different specialists, each specific to their respective specialties. Because functional medicine presents symptoms in different areas, it conducts advanced tests to uncover common underlying functional disorders and plans treatments to support function, while examining these diseases separately.

We believe that the elimination diet, exercise and nutritional supplements recommended under the supervision of a functional medicine specialist, based on all tests and a detailed medical history, will make significant contributions to the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases when applied together with the standard treatment of the specialist physician for that disease.