If you have mysterious symptoms and are looking for answers and healing, we’re not surprised if you’ve heard about integrative or functional medicine. These styles of are care are becoming all the rage! But what are they? What are the benefits? What are the downfalls? Read on for a breakdown so you can understand whether these styles of care are right for you.
(This blog is adapted from an in-depth 38 page eBook, Finding Answers: Which Practitioner is Right for Me?, which can be viewed if subscribed to Remedy Roadmap’s course #1. The goal of the eBook within the course is to help you decipher which practitioner suits your specific needs and personality, and who can provide you with the answers and healing you deserve. We breakdown every style of care from primary care doctors to internal and osteopathic medicine doctors, to functional and integrative care, to naturopathy to Chinese medicine and more. Also included with this eBook are resources on where to find excellent healing doctors and practitioners, along with questions you can ask them before committing so you can properly vet their expertise in healing mysterious health issues. Check out the course here.)
Alright, let’s dive in!
Integrative Medicine & Functional Medicine
What is this style of care? Integrative medicine and functional medicine both use a holistic, personalized approach to healing. These are frameworks of care that different styles of doctors and practitioners can adopt and work within – you may come across functional or integrative doctors, naturopaths, Chinese medicine practitioners, nutritionists, or health coaches. Integrative and functional models are becoming increasingly similar in style and difficult to differentiate.
Got it. What’s the framework? “Integrative” and “functional” are often used interchangeably but they stem from different frameworks. Integrative care stems from a whole-person approach – not just your physical body but also the impacts of your mental health, stresses, social connections and more.1 Functional care stems from knowing there’s a root cause for every malaise in the body, that everything in the body is connected, and that no two individuals are the same.2 Both integrative and functional practitioners step outside of the pharmaceutical model and recommend ways to support your natural healing abilities. This can either be done through herbs, movement, breath work, bodywork, therapy, and much much more! You’ll often find that the best practitioners combine both these models, but only refer to themselves as one or the other of “integrative” or “functional”. So, it’s important to do your research and understand their specific style of care.
Pros, Integrative Medicine:
*Integrative medicine uses a whole-person approach which has significant benefits for the patient. For example, did you know being socially connected is associated with a 50% reduced risk of early death?3 Meaning, “These findings indicate that the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption and exceed the influence of other risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.” 3 Is your brain exploding yet? Ours is! These are crucial points of interest for your practitioner to be discussing with you, which is why a whole-person and integrative approach can be very valuable to you.
*Integrative care focuses on the mind-body connection. It is now well documented that people who find healing don’t just focus on the physical, but consider the mental piece just as important (or even more important!). To showcase this, let’s highlight research from Dr. Kelley Turner, a cancer therapist, who spent years researching what she calls “radical remission” cancer cases. These are people who beat cancer above all odds, people who were told they would never live life the same and die at a young age, but are now living and thriving. What she found in her research was the impact of our mind-body connection. She noted, “Surprisingly, only two of the nine most frequent factors of Radical Remission cases in this book are physical (diet change and herbs/supplements); the rest are emotional or spiritual in nature.” 4 In addition to Dr. Turner’s work, there is now enough research to show the benefits of the mind-body connection in healing, which is why finding an integrative practitioner can be very helpful throughout your journey.
Healing tip! To learn more about the mind-body connection and how our nervous system, mental health and stressors impact our health, join the Remedy Roadmap course, Making sense of the nervous system: the important role it plays in healing and in helping you feel better now.
*A benefit to seeing any practitioner outside of the conventional medical space is the time spent between practitioner and patient discussing concerns, specific symptoms, needs, desires, and more. Many people with chronic conditions feel unheard and helpless, simply because their appointment times are too quick with their primary care providers (PCPs). On average, PCPs spend 5.3 minutes with their patients asking questions and talking about concerns5, versus 1-2 hours at an integrative office. This difference can be monumental in a person’s healing, not only because it provides more time working through a patient’s complicated case, but also simply because the patient feels heard and understood. Feeling heard and understood can bring a patient out of a severe fear state, which is important because living in a state of fear is documented to stop our immune system from working.6 Thus, feeling heard and understood is crucial to healing!
Pros, Functional Medicine:
*Functional medicine has a deep understanding of chronic conditions, mystery symptoms and how to heal. This is because they determine how and why an illness occurs, bringing significant benefit to the patient. For example – is your depression and anxiety a true chemical imbalance, or are your hormones being wonky? But if your hormones are wonky, there’s always a cause for that too. A functional practitioner understands this and they will address the root cause that is disrupting your hormones that are then making you depressed, to hopefully rid your depression for good. The functional approach believes that it’s never what is just appearing on the surface, known as your symptoms. They know there is an underlying root cause and reason for everything and that healing cannot happen unless those are addressed and cured.
*Functional medicine understands that one condition can have many different causes and, likewise, one cause may result in many different conditions. The Institute for Functional Medicine gives an example, “For example, depression can be caused by many different factors, including inflammation. Likewise, a cause such as inflammation may lead to a number of different diagnoses, including depression and more. The precise manifestation of each cause depends on the individual’s genes, environment, and lifestyle, and only treatments that address the right cause will have lasting benefit beyond symptom suppression”.2 The understanding that one condition can have many different causes and one cause can lead to many different conditions, stems from a deep understanding of how everything in the body is connected.
*A benefit to seeing a practitioner outside of the conventional medical space is the time spent between practitioner and patient discussing concerns, specific symptoms, needs, desires, and more. This pro is repeated from the integrative section so feel free to skip if you already read above. Many people with chronic conditions feel unheard and helpless, simply because their appointment times are too quick with their primary care providers (PCPs). On average, PCPs spend 5.3 minutes with the patients asking questions and talking about concerns5, versus 1-2 hours at a functional office. This difference can be monumental in a person’s healing, not only because it provides more time working through a patient’s complicated case, but also simply because the patient feels heard and understood. Feeling heard and understood can bring a patient out of a severe fear state, which is important because living in a state of fear is documented to literally stop our immune system from working. 6 Thus, feeling heard and understood is crucial to healing!
*Functional medicine practitioners have a repository of functional labwork tests that can help you find answers. There is a huge difference between the labwork that’s covered by insurance and done in your PCP’s office versus “functional labwork” which substantially covers more variables. For a deep dive into these differences, how functional labwork can help you find the answers you’ve been searching for and what specific tests to ask for, check out the eBook, Labwork that Works for You.
*Functional medicine uses a bio-individual approach – meaning that no two people are the same. The causes of patients’ conditions will almost always differ from each other and healing modalities that work for one person may not work for the other. Healing is a puzzle and good functional medical practitioners understand this – they won’t lump you with everyone else and instead create personalized plans tailored to you.
*Functional medicine practitioners understand that our body is self-healing and by harnessing our body’s inherent wisdom to heal itself, they can guide us to wellness and total health. They focus on removing the body’s stressors (toxic chemicals, toxic relationships, etc) and strengthening the body’s defenses (proper digestion, nutrition, etc). This combination brings the body back into balance. When our body is out of balance, our healing mechanisms don’t fire properly, which is why re-centering will allow the body to tap into its inherent healing wisdom that has evolved since our creation. Our body is highly intelligent – it knows what to do! But sometimes things get in the way and it needs a little help.
One basic example that highlights our body’s inherent wisdom is the use case of a fever. If you have the flu that is accompanied by a fever, a functional medicine practitioner may tell you to let that fever run its course, versus trying to suppress it (unless that fever is severely high of course). This is because they know the heat from the fever is very valuable to you and your immune system – it is kicking off a series of cellular mechanisms that fight off viruses and bacteria so you can overcome the flu.7 Thus, suppressing a fever may make your flu last longer. Weighing these options is what a functional medicine practitioner should be good at, benefiting you on your path toward healing
Cons, Integrative & Functional Medicine:
*While integrative/functional practitioners are one of the go-to professionals for healing, many can still adopt the conventional mindset of “pill for an ill”, but instead of using pharmaceuticals, it’s supplements. Supplements are a powerful, and often necessary tool for healing; but many practitioners rely too heavily on supplements and expect them to be a cure-all. And as with pharmaceuticals, many supplements can provide relief by masking our symptoms, but this doesn’t always translate to real healing. As noted above, unless we use a holistic approach that considers our background, nutrition, environment, mental state, stressors and much more, supplements can only go so far. It is important to understand this when looking for a practitioner so you can understand their style of healing.
*Functional and integrative practitioners are becoming trendy, and for good reason. But not all integrative/functional practitioners are created equal. Just by having “integrative” or “functional” in their title, does not automatically mean they are critical thinking geniuses who can rid you of all malaise. Some are still prone to having tunnel vision, not using bio-individual approaches, or symptom chasing with supplements. Humans vary in our capabilities and skills, so make sure to vet your future practitioner and their reviews carefully. As well, you may find you bounce between a couple functional or integrative practitioners over your healing journey years, because while one may be great at healing you in one area, you need a different practitioner to heal you in another area.
Healing tip! To lend a hand in the overwhelming phase of finding a good practitioner, Remedy Roadmap has curated a list of practitioners who care deeply about your journey and are here to help you heal. We will consider your specific symptoms, needs and desires and match you with a pre-vetted practitioner. Learn more here.
*Many functional practitioners have a strong understanding of your root causes and what’s needed in order for you to heal, but aren’t as clear on how to get you there. For example, in the functional world, detoxing is well understood as an important element for healing; so they’ll set you up on a detox protocol but uh oh, you get worse! This is very common in the functional world and it comes from a lack of knowledge in the steps needed before putting a patient on a detox protocol. So, they understand what’s needed, but don’t always understand the intricacies of how to get you there. This is why your own education and research are very valuable, so you know what to be on the lookout for when finding a practitioner.
Healing tip! Crashing after a detox protocol or becoming worse is an all too common story. Learn how to avoid this by joining the course, Demystifying detox: understanding detox methods and how to avoid harmful mistakes.
*After reading this blog, you may be thinking that using a functional medicine or integrative medicine practitioner is what you need. But if you find yourself still overwhelmed on how to actually find a good one, we can lend a hand through our 1:1 services. Remedy Roadmap has curated a list of practitioners who care deeply about your journey and are here to help you heal. We will consider your specific symptoms, needs and desires and match you with a pre-vetted practitioner. Learn more about out 1:1 services here.
Sources:
1. Complementary, alternative, or Integrative Health: What’s in a name? National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/complementary-alternative-or-integrative-health-whats-in-a-name. Accessed February 13, 2023
2. Functional Medicine: A Clinical Model to Address Chronic Disease and Promote Well-Being. The Institute for Functional Medicine. Publsished 2021. Accessed February 13, 2023. https://functionalmedicine.widen.net/s/pkcvf2wzlj/ifm_functional_medicine_descriptive_paper.
3. Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2910600/. Published July 27, 2010. Accessed February 13, 2023.
4. Turner KA. Chapter 5. In: Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer against All Odds. New York, NY: HarperOne; 2015.
5. Tai-Seale M, McGuire TG, Zhang W. Time Allocation in Primary Care Office visits. Health services research. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2254573/. Published October 2007. Accessed February 13, 2023.
6. Craske M, Glover D, Fahey J, Segerstorm S. Worry affects the immune response to phobic fear. Brain, behavior, and immunity. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10373274/. Accessed February 13, 2023.
7. Why fever can be your friend in times of illness. MedicalNewsToday. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321889. Published March 15, 2022. Accessed February 13, 2023.