In many aspects, the world of medicine has come full circle and alternative options like functional medicine are perfect proof of that. Prior to the discovery of modern medicine the world relied on shamans and healers to help us with our medical woes, these men and women held certain beliefs and they relied heavily on the seeds, plants and gifts from the Earth to cure ailments which we may have had. In reality modern medicine relied heavily on those ancient practices, and now we are seeing once again the emergence of those practices as more and more people are looking to take things back to the Earth and back to older world beliefs in order to maintain their health.
Today in particular we are going to take a look at the core principles of functional medicine, and how this belief and medical system works. Without further ado then, let’s take a look.
The Individual
One of the core principles of this approach to medicine is that each of us is an individual in terms of our makeup, and that is how they are treated, regardless of whether or not they have a similar condition to others. The belief is that biochemically we are all unique and therefore we all need different types of treatment.
Intelligence
Functional medicine is also the belief of the fact that the body is intelligent enough to cure itself in many instances and that we shouldn’t be so quick to decide on taking medication which may end up causing our body’s natural remedy to be interrupted. This form of medicine places a major focus on the body and our ability to cure ourselves.
Vitality
One aspect of functional medicine which many enjoy is the idea that being in good health is not about being free from illness, it is in fact the sense of complete vitality. This is a really important point and somewhere that many of us have become mislead over the years, in assuming that we are healthy when in actual fact, we are just free from disease.
There is a great emphasis on science here within functional medicine and that has long been the same, the notion is to have full faith in the discoveries that we make through scientific experiments and research. The key to the science behind functional medicine is that they aim to understand the relationships within the body and how those relationships between different aspects of the body, are able to cause and help a number of ailments and diseases.
Functional medicine asks different questions than those within traditional medicine, instead of looking into what drugs can cure a certain issue, it looks instead at why a certain bodily function is no longer working, or why it has malfunctioned, in understanding that, functional medicine is able to take a completely different approach in solving the same problem, and looking into a very different way of curing the patient beyond drugs.
