Functional Medicine Vs Integrative Medicine
Functional Medicine and Integrative Medicine are no strangers to each other. To Know the difference between the two, you need to understand Functional medicine and Integrative medicine individually.
What is Integrative Medicine?
Integrative medicine involves therapies and treatments that collectively aim at healing an individual at the physical, mental, and spiritual levels. Along with therapy, it also involves slight but significant modifications in lifestyle. In integrative medicine, the health-seeker is an equal partner in the relationship with the healthcare provider. The connection or bond between the two is deep and strong because it is only with complete trust that the unseen can be seen, and the hidden be healed. Hence, maintaining open, honest, and clear communication with the healthcare provider is of great importance in integrative care.
Integrative medicine blends conventional approaches to healthcare with traditional methodologies of preventive care, healing, and maintenance. Simply put, it considers various aspects of well-being and integrates treatment procedures to achieve overall health and wellness.
What does an Integrative Medicine doctor do?
It is a misconception that integrative medicine aims at doing away with or replacing conventional medicine. This does not happen at all, integrative medicine blends alternative medicine methodologies with the traditional. An integrative medicine physician works alongside conventional treatment methods to heal the individual from the core by addressing the body, the mind, and the spirit.
What is Functional Medicine?
Functional medicine focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of an ailment or a disorder. It states that each symptom could be one of the many contributors to the ailment and vice-versa. Simply put, it functions on the philosophy of “One condition, many causes,ses, and one cause, many conditions”
Functional Medicine in Dubai looks at a chronological organization of medical history which assists in identifying which contributes, encourages, or points out predispositions towards unfavorable health conditions or illnesses. The temporal relevance between events in an individual span-span assists in figuring out a cause-effect relationship.
What does a Functional Medicine doctor do?
A Functional Medicine physician prioritizes and organizes health issues faced by the patients, by way of a thorough and detailed study of the personal, family, social, and medical history of the patients. This methodology assists in putting together what seem to be disparate issues, into a context, giving the doctor a comprehensive perspective on the situation.
Whom is Integrative and Functional Medicine most useful for?
Individuals suffering from multi-faceted disorders such as arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, depression, etc. may benefit from Integrative and Functional medicine as both primarily address the root causes rather than focus on symptoms. Both look at the healthcare seeker as a complete and whole entity influenced in various ways by mental, physical, spiritual, and social aspects of day-to-day life.
Advantages of Integrative and Functional Medicine
Both Integrative and Functional Medicine:
- Use a holistic approach to treat the whole and complete individual
- Use a blend or combination of treatment methodologies to address the root cause behind the ailment
- Are known to address multi-faceted health issues
- Hold an individualized and patient-centric approach
- Understand that each person is unique and so are his or her needs
- Enable patients and physicians to work together on addressing the root cause
- Help build a patient-physician bond
- Help design personalized and effective treatment plans to meet individual needs and requirements
- Aim at personalized care
