NUTRITION TOWARDS A FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE

Functional medicine determines how and why disease arises and aims to restore  health by addressing the root causes of disease for each individual.

Nutritional and environmental medicine focuses on the interactions of  nutrition and  of the environment with human biochemistry and physiology, as well as the resulting physiological and psychological symptoms and pathologies. It is commonly referred to as integrative medicine and/or functional medicine (FM).

The  MF presents an individualized, patient-centered, science-based model that enables patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease, restore homeostasis, and promote optimal well-being.

This requires a detailed understanding of each patient's genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle factors and leverages that data to guide personalized treatment plans that lead to better patient outcomes.Nutritional deficiencies, imbalances, or the presence of environmental toxins and  a sickness. Treatment aims to correct the underlying causes as well as provide symptomatic relief.

This may involve eliminating certain foods from the diet or toxins from the patient's environment, or prescribing supplements such as vitamins, minerals, trace elements and essential fatty acids when the diet and lifestyle alone cannot correct physiological imbalances.

By addressing the root causes rather than the symptoms, practitioners are moving towards identifying the complexity of the disease. They may find that a disease has many different causes and similarly one cause may lead to many different pathologies. Accordingly, functional medicine treatment targets the specific manifestations of the disease in each individual.