Functional Medicine and Chronic Illness
Chronic illness is an illness that persists past six months and usually follows declining function in one or more of the body’s systems that had been going on for a period of time, even years. Optimizing health requires improving the underlying dysfunction that have contributed to the state of imbalance or illness.
Functional medicine provides tools and protocols to allow clinicians to identify the underlying dysfunction and assistant in balancing the physiology to create and move toward optimal health.
Most illness such as high blood pressure or diabetes are not predetermined by genetics. Rather, research has found that “our life span is largely epigenetically determined.” This means that “diet and other environmental influences can influence our life span” (and health) “by changing the epigenetic information” (Pal and Tyler, 2016)*. Epigenetics means “above the genes” and relates to the environment outside and inside your system.
In other words It is how our genes are expressed by our environment and lifestyle rather than our physical inheritance that contributes to disease development.
Lifestyle choices, diet, stress, some activities influence the turning on and off of gene expression which influences the development of symptoms, illness or full blown disease.
Our experienced Functional Medicine providers at New You Health and Wellness directly assess and address these parameters to help you become in charge of your own health outcomes.
We recognize that a person’s environment is not just what is on the outside, but what is on the inside as well.
The Functional Medicine approach at New You Health and Wellness is “patient centered” not “symptom centered” and creates a partnership with our patients through personalized programs that get results.
Do you use blood tests or other tests to determine the underlying cause(s)?
Yes, blood test and other test results are often helpful in determining the underlying issues. However, listening to our patient’s story and asking questions to identify patterns that patients may have not been aware of are as valuable as blood tests which are a snapshot of one period of time.
We often suggest further testing to confirm that we are on the right track or to further personalize a program. These tests may include urine analysis, stool analysis, saliva testing or blood tests. But each person’s program is unique to their own experience. Any tests that can be done with the patient’s physician and covered by their insurance are welcomed to keep costs down.