Integrative & Functional Medicine
The foundation
The Core Principles:
Patient and practitioner are partners in the healing process.
All factors that influence health, wellness, and disease are taken into consideration, including mind, spirit, and community, as well as the body.
Appropriate use of both conventional and alternative methods facilitates the body's innate healing response.
Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive should be used whenever possible.
Integrative medicine neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically.
Good medicine is based in good science. It is inquiry-driven and open to new paradigms.
Alongside the concept of treatment, the broader concepts of health promotion and the prevention of illness are paramount
Practitioners of integrative medicine should exemplify its principles and commit themselves to self-exploration and self-development.
Why take a whole person approach to healing?
When we separate the mind from the body, we are operating from a world view of disconnection.
If we don’t make space for our soul in medicine, we are artificially separating the very spirit of life from our '“health”.
So long as we see our parts as separate, we cannot fully integrate ourselves back to wholeness.
What is Integrative Medicine vs. Functional Medicine?
Integrative Medicine is an approach to best understand our interconnected “integrative” experience. Pioneered by Dr. Andrew Weil, this whole person perspective is a more complete way to practice medicine.
"Integrative Medicine (IM) is healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person, including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship between practitioner and patient, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapies."
- University of Arizona, Center for Integrative Medicine
An Integrative Medicine approach draws upon all possible modalities and healing traditions in order to restore balance. Integrative medicine honors and works with these many woven aspects of our interconnectedness.
Functional Medicine has grown in popularity alongside Integrative Medicine. While Integrative medicine is a whole person approach, Functional medicine offers an operating system or map, so the client and practitioner can begin to explore this interconnectedness in a practical, step wise fashion.
Driven by research, and our expanding understanding of the biochemistry that underlies all healthy, Functional medicine aims to identify the root causes underlying chronic disease. It uses a micro/macro systems-oriented approach and engages both patient and practitioner in a partnership. Functional medicine is personalized medicine, and looks at interactions between genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex chronic disease.