What is Functional Medicine
Functional Medicine
Often by the time someone comes to a doctor they are seeing the downstream effects of years of dysfunction that builds to cause disease. By working with a Functional Medicine and Nutrition practitioner, they can look upstream and identify the healing opportunities to get the body back to a state of healing. Through very personalized supplementation and lifestyle recommendations (that is indicated by lab results) it is amazing what can brought back into balance and how the body can find its natural state of homeostasis again.
We have now come to a time when medicine, nutrition and herbal medicine have evolved to the point today that herbal recommendations and supplementation can be made against lab results which get to the true root causes of health conditions. Functional Medicine and Nutrition are holistic disciplines that employ functional laboratory assessments to identify malfunctions and underlying conditions at the root of most common health complaints. It is a very individualized and personalized science-based approach which considers lifestyle factors, genetics, and assessment of body systems.
Functional lab evaluation utilizes the most innovative labs and more specific “optimal” ranges than what is offered through regular doctors. These labs may include functional blood chemistry analysis, functional stool/microbiome test, detailed hormone evaluation, detoxification markers, food sensitivity testing, intestinal mucosal barrier assessment, mineral assessments and ratios, and others, depending on the person’s specific health history.
Although alternative or traditional medicine practitioners use diagnostic tools that can be helpful, our western scientific understanding has now evolved so that we now know how functional labs can be used to identify upstream causes that are the root of many health conditions. A common motto is “test don’t guess”. These labs and careful health history intake and correlation offer a functional understanding of what is happening in the body, at which point lifestyle, herbs, supplementation and prescriptions can be made to help correct dysfunction that is happening further upstream in the body, affecting health in a systemic way.
Signing up for a Functional Medicine service will get you a total lifestyle and functional medicine evaluation and make-over which will guide the personalization of your lifestyle & supplementation protocol. This approach is directed and will stop the endless trial and error use of supplements and/or diets in which many people are caught up. With use of this personalized approach, healing opportunities are identified and addressed which then help the body return to a state of ease, health and resiliency.
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My daughter was dealing with symptoms of eye twitching, tension headaches, fatigue and skin issues. She’s going off to college soon and I wanted to give her the gift of good health through natural healing, let her experience her body’s inherent ability to heal when she supports it. I could see that my daughter (Sally) was stressed and spent a lot of time lounging in bed due to fatigue and her skin issues weren’t improving despite excellent hygiene. One of my massage clients mentioned how Kerry’s work with her with flower essences was helping her get through some grief issues. In addition, I know what a medical doctor would do and choose not to go that route. And I knew that the idea of flower essences would appeal to my daughter. After a few short months of work with Kerry, her tension headaches and eye twitching are now minimal, if not gone! The Mental Focus supplement and flower essences helped her tremendously, and she also took a variety of supplements and from her diet cut out a lot more sugar and dairy and carbs, without anyone urging her to do this! She also takes initiative to stay active by hiking and consistently going to pilates—this is a new version of my daughter! The sessions with Kerry were the longest she has ever stuck it out with anyone and it has been such an eye opening experience. She seems to have enough energy to last through her day and doesn’t spend most of her weekend staying in bed. Now she can juggle school, work and exercising! Kerry really taught my daughter metaphorically “how to fish”!