If you are adverse to traditional medicine which can often seem to value treating symptoms rather than the patient, and uses an overabundance of pills and procedures that are dictated by Big Pharma rather than good common sense medical treatments, then you need to find a functional medicine doctor.
Functional medicine physicians are medical doctors who have gone through all of the proper schooling to get their medical degrees, and once they attain their degrees they take extra training on how to provide more patient-centric care to medical patients.
Functional medicine doctors specialize in treating the underlying causes of medical conditions rather than the symptoms caused by medical conditions.
To do this, functional medicine doctors look at the entire patient, rather than only the area of illness, and take into account the patient’s mental, societal, physical, and emotional factors and the environment that the patient is in, to see which of these might be the cause or a major contributor to the illness.
Providing total care to patients requires a specific non-traditional approach to treating illness. It begins with the creation of a close personal relationship between doctor and patient. This is a lost art in traditional medicine where too often the doctor either does not take the time or simply does not have the time to build a strong personal relationship with patients.
The benefit of this is that there is more openness and honesty about patient feelings, actions and beliefs. Knowing these things better, gives the doctor a better chance of both understanding the patient’s medical issues and how to provide care.
Functional Doctors Create Better Personal Relationships with Patients
The primary step for a functional doctor is an open dialogue with the patient to create an honest patient-doctor relationship. The functional doctor uses a systems-oriented approach that engages both doctor and patient in a therapeutic partnership. This strategy is based on the belief that the patient has the greatest ability to impact their own health.
For this reason, functional medicine doctors use techniques that promote healthy lifestyles. These include a focus on creating a consistent exercise regimen, a proper healthy diet and a keen focus on maintaining a good state of emotional, mental, and social health that will reduce or eliminate stress inducing factors in the patient’s life.
Functional Doctors Use a Range of Medical Therapies
Functional doctors will select from medical therapies that are used around the world to find the right mix of treatments for patients. Again leaning more heavily on the ones that are natural or holistic. However they do detailed research on things they prescribe to understand their effects on patients.
Functional Doctors Use Traditional Western Medicine Too
Functional doctors will also call upon their traditional or western medicine when required and integrate this in their approach to medical care. For this reason many people are attracted to functional doctors. Their ability to mix the holistic with the traditional, gives comfort to those who want to have options but do not want to disconnect completely from the traditional medicine world.
If you have an ailment and are not satisfied with your traditional doctor, consider visiting a functional medicine doctor for a higher level of focus and care.
