Functional Medicine Practitioners Address the Root, or Underlying Cause of Disease or Dysfunction

Question

Mariel Monroy · Accepted Answer

The goal of functional medicine is to evaluate and treat the root cause of a disease or illness and not just the symptoms. Symptoms are a sign that there is an underlying health issue; they are not the cause! Take an individual with diabetes or high blood sugar, for example. These individuals are frequently given medications to help lower blood sugar values by stimulating the pancreas to produce more insulin, the hormone that lowers our blood sugar.

Functional medicine begins the investigation by asking the question of why a patient’s blood sugar is high in the first place. People do not get sick from a lack of medications. Does this particular patient have cellular insulin resistance due to diet and lifestyle habits, or a hypothalamic-pituitary -axis dysfunction causing imbalanced cortisol production or an underlying gut issue? All of which can contribute to blood sugar imbalances and insulin resistance.

In this example, there is nothing wrong with the actual function of the pancreas! The use of blood sugar management medications will make their blood sugar levels look good on a lab test, but it doesn’t address the real reason why their blood sugar is high in the first place!

With concurrent treatment from your primary health provider, functional medicine can be the missing piece to the puzzle that helps you to decrease or get off medications and take your health back!