Functional Medicine sounds powerful but it has serious limitations

A client emailed me: "I've heard several people mention they are seeing a functional medicine doctor. As this is a new term for me, I started looking into what functional medicine entails. I'm wondering if the type of care we are doing together would be considered functional medicine?”

I wrote back: What we are doing would not be considered functional medicine, but I do consider my practice as having evolved from functional medicine.

Starting in 2006, I did advanced training in functional medicine and changed my practice accordingly. It’s an attractive approach because there is a certain amount of power in the conceit that if we can just get enough information, we can solve the disease. So there are a lot of tests and a lot of details; information that I now feel is misleading at its core.

Why? Because even though the amount of information feels vast, it is a tiny fraction of what actually happens every second within our bodies. Ie, our rational, logical mind and research and lab tests just can’t keep up with the actual speed of living systems. It's a folly to think otherwise.

Functional medicine does a valiant job at trying to figure out what function of the body is going wrong and then supporting that function with diet, supplements, and pharmaceuticals. This approach is different from the normal medical approach of naming a disease and then matching a treatment to that disease.

For example, I used to treat patients with autoimmune thyroid disease (Hashimoto’s, usually). Standard medicine waits until the thyroid has been damaged enough to need thyroid hormone replacement and then prescribes that medicine for the rest of the person’s life. Why? Because they see the thyroid as the problem and will zero in on fixing the thyroid only.

The functional medicine approach is to try to better understand the underlying (physical) causes of the disease. For Hashimoto's--it's not a thyroid problem as much as an immune system one. So as a functional med doc, I would dive deep into the weeds of each individual's immune system. It’s straightforward in theory and can be helpful, but it's also beyond the reach of our medical knowledge.

I was frustrated because I have high standards for success and I knew I didn't have the information I needed to succeed. We just flat out don’t know enough about the human body or the individual stresses that each person endures to understand and treat each person's unique version of disease.

In other words, even as I was overwhelmed by the complexity of my functional medicine approach, I was also frustrated that it wasn’t enough to help my patients thrive. It was an unhealthy paradox.

So, to save myself from burnout and overwhelm, I fell back on the only thing that has ever helped me when my logical "I'll figure it out" mind fails.

I started using my intuition as a clinical tool.

In 2015, I learned the bioresonance approach that is based on coupling my intuition with the intuition of my clients in order to cut through the functional med B.S. with a sharp, deeply insightful knife. I have left functional med dietary lists, lab results, and supplement combinations behind, and I partner with the consciousness and wisdom of the person sitting in front of me (and the plants that surround us both).

“B.S.” is a strong term, but functional medicine is based on a “B.S.” assumption that the human body and human health are simply a jumble of complex mechanical pathways that can be manipulated by mechanistic and reductive science.

Leaving this limited world view behind, my clients and I are enjoying better results and more joy in the process.

Thank you for reading.