Probably, a more accurate description of "functional medicine" would be "scientific medicine" which is grounded in a reverence for the facts, a scrupulous review of the literature, and a willingness to go against the crowd of the accepted current medical thinking.  In psychiatry, for example, the "tranquilizer chair" - where mental patients were chained and then blasted with high pressure water hoses -  was considered "state of the art" therapy at the time (in the 1850's).  That it was flat out wrong and inhumane was not, at the time, a widely recognized or appreciated fact.  Key point: just because many of the medical "bigwigs" think something is or is not so does not necessarily make it that way!

Functional medicine's principles are grounded in an acknoweldgment of every individual's unique genetic variability, an intelligent appraisal of environmental risk factors, an assessment of physiologic integrity (including abnormal immune responses, intestinal hyperpermeability, nutritional status, and other variables), and a "proactive" approach to both maximizing health and minimizing disease processes.  It is not a panacea, and is not an "alternative" to the conventional medicine practiced day in and day out in my colleagues' offices in the United States and elsewhere in the world.  It can best be understood, rather, as an attempt to assess the basic, "foundational" physiological structure of the patient, to maximize the patient's underlying health, and to bring to bear the best of the world's scientific knowledge in the aggressive and vigorous prosecution of medical and mental health abnormalities. 

Many physicians, including me, have had only a light glossing over of nutritional issues in medical schools.  Many ideas which have been taught in medical school are now no longer accurate or valid according to the current scientific literature.  That doesn't keep some physicians, however, from being bull-headed and stubborn about clinging to outmoded beliefs.  My philosophy is: the proof of the pudding is...... in the literature.  The internet has been a great "equalizer" in this regard.  Use it to search for answers to your questions and to become empowered. 

Read my essay on functional medicine here. 

Click here for a photo-tour through the 9th Annual Institute of Functional Medicine Conference in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.  Highly educational!!

Click here for a photo-tour through the latest 21st Century Medicine developments: Predictive Genomics and the Genomics conference I attended in Washington, D.C.!