Are you feeling frustrated with your current healthcare experience? If you're nodding your head, functional medicine might be the answer you've been searching for.
You'll want to keep reading if any of these sound familiar. You have you been dealing with ongoing health issues that just won't go away. Maybe you've been to doctor after doctor, only to be told, "Your labs look fine." Yet, you know deep down that you don't feel fine.
Are you tired of being told, "It's all in your head"? If you're experiencing real symptoms but conventional medicine can't seem to pinpoint a diagnosis.
Do you find yourself taking medication after medication, only to experience temporary relief before your symptoms return?
If you believe that your mind, body, and lifestyle are all interconnected parts of your health, you'll appreciate functional medicine's whole-person approach. It considers factors like stress, sleep, nutrition, and environmental toxins that conventional medicine often overlooks.
Are you someone who wants to prevent illness before it starts? Functional medicine isn't just for the sick…it's for anyone who wants to optimize their health and wellbeing for the long term.
If you resonate with any of these descriptions, you might be the ideal candidate for functional medicine. It's time to stop accepting "you're fine" when you know you're not. Functional medicine offers a path to truly understanding your body and reclaiming your health.
Functional vs. Conventional Medicine
Let's talk about two different ways doctors approach healthcare: functional medicine and conventional medicine. Both play important roles in keeping us healthy, but they have pretty different ways of looking at your health and wellbeing.
Functional medicine is all about getting to the root cause of health issues. It's like having a health detective who looks at your whole life - not just your symptoms - to figure out what's really going on.
On the other hand, conventional medicine is what most of us are used to. It's great for treating immediate health problems and managing symptoms, but doesn't get to the underlying issues of why chronic conditions are manifesting in the first place.
Understanding these two approaches can really help you take charge of your own health journey. It's not about picking one over the other - it's about finding what works best for you. After all, your health is personal, and your healthcare should be too!
The Conventional Medicine Approach
Conventional medicine, often called “Western medicine,” is what most people think of when they go to the doctor. This system focuses on diagnosing diseases and treating symptoms, typically with medication or surgery.
Here’s a breakdown of how conventional medicine works:
Symptom Management
When you visit your primary care physician with an ailment, the focus is often on managing or alleviating your symptoms. For example, if you have high blood pressure, your doctor will likely prescribe medication to lower it without necessarily looking for the root cause.
Standardized Treatment Protocols
Treatment is often standardized across patients. Going back to managing elevated blood pressure, the "treatment" will likely involve prescribed medications, including ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, and beta blockers, often a combo of medications, and often one-size-fits-all dietary advice, typically including reducing salt intake regardless of individual differences such as genetic makeup, lifestyle, or personal preferences.
Acute Care Focus
Conventional medicine excels at acute care, such as treating wounds, broken bones, and emergencies—situations where immediate intervention is crucial, and I’m truly grateful for that! However, it often tends to over-rely on antibiotics and anti-inflammatories like Tylenol and NSAIDs. While these approaches have their place, I don't believe conventional medicine effectively addresses common infections like strep, mono, the flu, or the common cold.
Lab Testing
Conventional medicine typically uses labs to diagnose diseases but often relies on "standard" lab ranges. These ranges are broad, and sometimes, results within these ranges can still leave you feeling less than optimal. For instance, your thyroid levels might fall within the "normal" range, but you could still experience symptoms of fatigue or weight gain that indicate deeper imbalances. It's important to understand that these normal ranges are based on population averages, which include both healthy and unhealthy individuals. Given that a significant portion of the population struggles with chronic health issues, these "normal" ranges may not actually represent optimal health. This means you could be told your labs are "normal" even when your body is far from its ideal state of functioning.
The Functional Medicine Approach
Functional medicine, on the other hand, seeks to get to the root cause of disease. Instead of looking at the body’s systems in isolation and just treating symptoms, it looks at the body as a whole and as a complex set of systems to address underlying imbalances.
This is for people who want REAL answers and lasting relief to their symptoms, who are ready to take charge of their own health and feel empowered, knowing that their daily actions can help heal their body from the inside out, on a cellular level.
Let’s look at the key components of this functional medicine approach:
Root Cause Resolution
The goal in functional medicine is not just to mask symptoms but to figure out why they’re happening in the first place. Take elevated blood pressure, for example. Instead of simply prescribing medication to lower it, a functional practitioner like myself would explore potential underlying factors. These might include imbalances in gut health (such as dysbiosis or leaky gut), chronic stress that affects hormone levels, nutrient deficiencies (like magnesium or potassium), food sensitivities that contribute to inflammation, exposure to toxins (such as heavy metals or mold), or blood sugar imbalances.
Individualized Treatment Plans
No two bodies are alike, so treatment in functional medicine is highly personalized. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, your treatment protocol is tailored to your unique biochemistry, lifestyle, and genetics. Your personalized plan will be created based on your current system, your functional lab results, and genetics.
Prevention and Holistic Health
Functional medicine doesn’t just focus on treating illness…it prioritizes preventing it. I help patients optimize areas like diet, lifestyle, and stress management, reduce toxin exposure, correct nutrient imbalances, address chronic low lying infections (ie. Lyme, EBV, MARCoNS, & staph), all aiming to keep you healthy and balanced in the long term.
Comprehensive Labs and Optimal Ranges
One of the most significant differences is how labs are used in functional medicine. While conventional medicine uses standard reference ranges to identify disease, functional medicine often works within ranges that are optimal for health. This can help detect imbalances before they develop into full-blown diseases.
For example, in conventional medicine, a TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) level of 4.5 might be considered normal. But in functional medicine, a TSH over 2.5 might raise concern, leading us to dive deeper into potential thyroid dysfunction earlier and with more nuance.
Treatment Protocols
Functional medicine protocols are designed to support your body’s natural healing processes. Treatment might include targeted nutrition, lifestyle changes, stress reduction techniques, supplements, and even mind-body practices to restore balance. For example, if you’re dealing with gut issues, a functional approach will involve assessing the diet, and assessing the health of the gut via a stool assessment, correcting imbalances in the gut microbiome, dealing with potential infections, and restoring the integrity of the intestinal lining.
The Key to Personalized Care are Functional Medicine Labs
In functional medicine, labs aren’t just about diagnosing disease—they’re about uncovering imbalances and tracking progress. The focus is on comprehensive testing, which means looking at a wide array of factors, such as:
Nutrient Levels: Comprehensive testing for essential vitamins and minerals, including:
Vitamin D (25-OH vitamin D): Crucial for bone health, immune function, and mood regulation
Magnesium (RBC magnesium): Important for energy production, muscle function, and nervous system regulation
B vitamins (B12, folate, B6): Essential for energy metabolism, cognitive function, and red blood cell formation
Iron panel (ferritin, TIBC, serum iron): Vital for oxygen transport and energy production
Zinc: Critical for immune function, wound healing, and taste perception
Hormones: Comprehensive hormone panels that go beyond basic thyroid testing:
Complete Thyroid panel (TSH, free T3, free T4, total T3 & T4 , T3 uptake, reverse T3, thyroid antibodies): Assesses thyroid function and autoimmune status
Sex hormones (estradiol, progesterone, FSH & LH, estrone, androstenedione, testosterone, DHEA-S): Influences mood, energy, libido, and overall well-being
Adrenal function (cortisol rhythm, DHEA): Evaluates stress response and adaptation
Insulin and blood sugar markers (fasting insulin, glucose and triglycerides, HbA1c): Assesses metabolic health and diabetes risk
Gut Health: In-depth analysis of digestive function and microbiome health:
Comprehensive stool analysis: Examines beneficial and pathogenic bacteria, yeast, parasites, and digestive markers
Intestinal permeability test: Assesses "leaky gut" which can contribute to systemic inflammation
Toxin Exposure: Specialized tests to identify environmental toxins:
Heavy metals panel (mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium): Assesses exposure to common toxic metals
Mycotoxin testing: Identifies mold toxins that can cause chronic inflammatory responses
Organic acids test: Evaluates metabolic toxins and markers of detoxification capacity
Environmental pollutants panel: Measures levels of pesticides, plasticizers, and other common environmental toxins
Immune Health: Testing for persistent infections that compromise immune health, including:
Lyme Disease and Co-Infections: Identifies Lyme (Borrelia) and co-infections like Babesia and Bartonella.
Chronic Low-Grade Infections: Screening for ongoing infections like Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), Strep, Staph, MARCoNS, and Actinomycetes, which can weaken the immune system.
Immune Markers: CBC with Differential assesses immune status by analyzing white blood cell types. LDH with Isoenzymes indicates cell damage and inflammation from chronic infections.
Inflammation Markers: hsCRP detects systemic inflammation. ESR (Sed Rate)measures overall inflammatory activity. Homocysteine indicates inflammation and detoxification efficiency.
Lab Ranges: Standard vs. Optimal
Here is one of the biggest differences when comparing functional medicine vs conventional medicine. As I touched on above, one of the most important things to understand is that lab ranges in conventional medicine are designed to detect disease, not necessarily to ensure optimal health. These ranges are typically based on population averages, including people who might not be healthy themselves. In contrast, functional medicine uses "optimal" ranges, which reflect the levels at which your body functions best, even if you aren't outwardly sick.
Let's dive deeper into this concept with some specific examples:
Thyroid Function: In conventional medicine, a TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) level between 0.5 and 4.5 mIU/L is often considered normal. However, in functional medicine, the optimal range is typically between 1.0 and 2.5 mIU/L. This marker is not in fact a thyroid marker, TSH is a pituitary hormone that communciates with the thyroid to trigger thyroid hormone production from the thyroid. This marker gives us information about the HP-T axis (hypothalamus/ pituitary -thyroid). This narrower range can help identify subtle thyroid imbalances that might be causing symptoms like fatigue, weight gain, or hair loss.
Vitamin D: Conventional medicine often considers a 25-hydroxyvitamin D level of 30 ng/mL sufficient. In functional medicine, the optimal range is typically 50-80 ng/mL. This higher range is associated with better immune function, mood regulation, and bone health.
Fasting Glucose: As mentioned earlier, conventional labs might say your fasting glucose is fine as long as it's under 100 mg/dL. But in functional medicine, anything above 85 mg/dL could indicate that your blood sugar isn't being well-regulated. Early intervention at this stage can prevent more significant issues like insulin resistance or diabetes down the road.
Magnesium: While conventional medicine often only tests serum magnesium (with a normal range of 1.7-2.2 mg/dL), functional medicine practitioners may use RBC magnesium tests, aiming for levels between 6.0-6.5 mg/dL. This can help identify magnesium deficiencies that might contribute to issues like muscle cramps, anxiety, or poor sleep quality.
By using these more precise, optimal ranges, as a functional medicine practitioner, I can often identify and address imbalances before they develop into more serious health issues. This proactive approach can lead to better overall health outcomes and improved quality of life for patients.
Let's be real - navigating the healthcare system can be frustrating, especially when you're dealing with chronic issues that just won't go away. I've been there, and I know how disheartening it can be to feel like you're not being heard or that your health concerns are being brushed aside. That's why I'm so passionate about functional medicine - it's a game-changer for so many people struggling with conditions that conventional medicine often struggles to address effectively.
Think about it - are you dealing with persistent fatigue that no amount of sleep seems to fix? Or maybe you're battling with digestive issues that make every meal a source of anxiety? Perhaps you're struggling with unexplained weight gain, hormonal imbalances, or autoimmune conditions that leave you feeling like your body is working against you? These are exactly the kind of complex, chronic conditions where functional medicine truly shines.
The beauty of functional medicine is that it doesn't just mask your symptoms - it digs deep to find the root cause of your health issues. We look at you as a whole person, not just a collection of symptoms. By addressing the underlying imbalances in your body, whether they're related to nutrition, stress, sleep, or environmental factors, we can help you achieve lasting health and vitality.
Remember, you deserve healthcare that truly meets your needs and helps you thrive. If you're tired of feeling dismissed or stuck in a cycle of symptom management, it might be time to explore a different approach. I'd love to chat with you about how functional medicine could be the key to unlocking your best health.
Why not take the first step towards feeling truly well again? Book a call with me, Eli Priest, Functional Nutrition Practitioner, and let's discuss how we can work together (in person or virtually) to create a personalized plan that addresses your unique health concerns. You don't have to navigate this journey alone - I'm here to support you every step of the way!
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