Functional Medicine is the Future of Healthcare – Available Today
Unlike traditional Western medicine, which often treats symptoms, functional medicine practitioners look for what causes disease. The team at Austin Quan Yin uses advanced diagnostics and testing to create custom, personalized treatment plans that can improve your health. Whether you have chronic complex illness symptoms like mood disorders, autoimmune disease, or gastrointestinal issues, functional medicine can help.
Functional medicine is a new approach to healing that can be used by doctors and other health practitioners such as acupuncturists, naturopaths, and chiropractors. It focuses on the underlying causes of health issues, and takes into account your genetics, lifestyle, and environment. It is designed to prevent and treat chronic conditions, as well as help you feel better with a holistic approach to healing.
Doctors who specialize in functional medicine have gone through conventional medical training, and may choose to get additional certification from the Institute of Functional Medicine to learn how to practice this form of healing. They work as part of your team, and are able to offer alternatives to pharmaceutical medications and a more natural and holistic approach to healing.
A key aspect of functional medicine is that it takes the time to get to know each patient and their unique health challenges. This includes recording a comprehensive health history, understanding the circumstances surrounding your first symptoms, and working with you to understand your experiences with previous healthcare providers. It also means exploring your diet, sleep patterns, emotional wellbeing, and lifestyle factors, to see how they might be impacting your health.
During the initial consultation, you can expect to have a lot of discussion, and an extensive physical exam. Your functional medicine practitioner will use a range of tools, including blood tests and urine analysis, to uncover signs that your body is not functioning as it should. These signs can include hormonal imbalances, nutrient deficiencies, imbalanced gut bacteria, metabolic dysfunction, and more.
As you and your functional medicine practitioner work together, you’ll be able to find the root cause of your health concerns. This can be difficult to do, as the symptoms you experience are often a combination of many factors that can influence one another. It’s important to remember that your symptoms are alerts, and should not be ignored or dismissed as irrelevant.
Ultimately, functional medicine aims to restore the body’s normal functions and support its own healing processes. This approach is particularly suited to chronic illnesses, which are often difficult to diagnose and treat using conventional methods. For this reason, it is an ideal solution for those with a complicated health story or who have had little success with other treatments. It’s an approach that can often produce stunning results, even for those who have been told by other healthcare professionals that their health issues are not curable. functional medicine austin