Functional Nutrition

In the ’90s there was a shift in the medical world, as more and more physicians recognized that their role and what they had to offer to their patients was true but partial.

They wanted to practice a new type of medicine, one that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient. Also, a system that focuses on the whole person, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches, healthcare professionals, and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing — a system designed to honor the person.

This is how Functional Medicine was born, when Dr. Jeffrey Bland realized that the healthcare system needed to be shifted from the traditional disease-centered focus to a more patient-centered approach. 

This meant addressing the whole person not just the symptoms, listening to patients’ history, and looking at the interaction between genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and chronic diseases.

A therapeutic focus on restoring the optimum function of the body and its organs, that works with systems and frameworks, toward resolving the root causes of any sign, symptom, or diagnosis, with a highlight on the importance of diet and lifestyle modification as part of its approach. 

Functional Nutrition is about how we use diet and lifestyle modification to get to the root imbalances that result in disease expression and progression. The answer to some of the problems in health and healthcare today. A modality that works to not just support, but also educate the patient in what’s going on in their body and how making uniquely targeted diet and lifestyle modifications will shift the terrain and help them to meet their goals. 

According to the Institute of Functional Medicine, there are some conditions to a functional practice:

1) The goal is to address the underlying cause of any sign, symptom, or disease state, aiming to get to the root of what is not functioning.

2) The practitioner engages in a system-based approach, always understanding that one physiological system in the body affects others and that it is a network with constant crosstalk and the sharing of common pathways.

3) The patient and the practitioner have to engage in a therapeutic partnership.

Most conditions today involve or are triggered by a number of factors or causes, not just one. Despite the growing population of chronically ill patients with multifactorial symptoms, there are fewer and fewer practitioners who are up to the challenge of addressing their concerns. 

Focused on single body systems, the current system ignores critical factors — from the health of other body systems to food eaten, to genetics, to travel history, to love and more — that could have an effect on a person’s healing. Everything is connected, we are all unique, all things matter.

In a 2017 paper entitled “Medically unexplained: symptoms and symptom disorders in primary care: prognosis-based recognition and classification,” in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Family Practice, the research background recognizes this problem: Many patients consult their GP because they experience bodily symptoms. In a substantial proportion of cases, the clinical picture does not meet the existing diagnostic criteria for diseases or disorders. This may be because symptoms are recent and evolving or because symptoms are persistent but, either by their character or the negative results of clinical investigation, cannot be attributed to disease: so-called “medically unexplained symptoms” (MUS). 

This points to an obvious lack of knowledge in our current medical system. The current medical model does not always know how to assess or treat chronic conditions, treating things like an infection or broken leg doesn’t work for chronic conditions like diabetes or autoimmunity. We can’t apply the same standard of care, and the price is the continued physical and emotional suffering of being misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, and continually living with the signs and symptoms nobody seems to have answers for.

Functional Nutrition allows us to help our clients understand better what is going on in their bodies, educate them, empower them, and help them take control of their lives. This is how we return healthcare to the individual, where it belongs. 

Working fully within my scope of practice, I can highlight where health and healing truly begins and make a difference in my client’s life. 

In good health, 

Ioana