1. Find research articles in a peer-reviewed source about a successful functional therapy.
2. Summarize the article by answering the following question:
a. What is the therapy?
b. How is the therapy used for illness prevention, health promotion, and heath restoration?
c. Choose one (1) technique to promote self-wellness and describe its function.
d. Identify the actions you can take to work with patients who use functional medicine and safeguard a patient's rights that choose to use this therapy.
e. What are some of the limitations of this therapy?
f. Include any other pertinent information.
How is the Therapy Used for Health Outcomes?
The functional medicine model applies a holistic, root-cause approach across the continuum of health:
Illness Prevention: FM practitioners use specialized lab markers (like C-reactive protein, vitamin D3, or markers for gut dysbiosis) to detect early aberrations and underlying dysfunctions before they manifest as a diagnosable disease. Personalized interventions—like targeted nutrient supplementation and dietary changes—are applied to reverse these imbalances, preventing the onset of chronic illness.
Health Promotion: Health is promoted by addressing the foundational lifestyle factors (nutrition, sleep, stress levels, physical activity) that contribute to chronic disease. By promoting optimal physiological function through personalized diet plans and stress management, FM empowers patients to take an active role in maintaining high-level wellness.
Health Restoration (Treatment): For patients with chronic, complex conditions (like inflammatory arthritis, type 2 diabetes, or chronic pain), FM is used as an adjunctive or primary therapy. The model identifies systemic imbalances (e.g., gut dysbiosis leading to inflammation) and customizes interventions (e.g., elimination diets, targeted supplementation) to alleviate the root cause, leading to symptom improvement and sustained, beneficial improvements in health-related quality of life.
Sample Answer
Functional Medicine: A Successful Patient-Centered Model
The following summary is based on a retrospective cohort study from the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, published in peer-reviewed sources like the NIH and PLOS One, which assessed the association of the functional medicine model of care with patient-reported health-related quality-of-life outcomes.
a. What is the Therapy?
The successful therapy examined is the Functional Medicine (FM) Model of Care.
Functional medicine is a patient-centered, systems biology-based approach to healthcare. Unlike conventional medicine, which often focuses on treating symptoms or individual diseases, FM seeks to identify and address the root causes of illness by analyzing the intricate interplay among various bodily systems (e.g., digestion, inflammation, hormones), lifestyle factors (nutrition, sleep, exercise, stress), and genetics. It uses advanced diagnostics and personalized interventions to restore and optimize health.