You spot a symptom, you take care of it, and it goes away...for a while. You know its due a visit in a couple of months. This kind of surface-level treatment is extremely frustrating, and its been going on for a while now. You see it in the one-track-mind diets and the tip-of-the-iceberg medication. Isn't it more beneficial to dig deeper to the root of the issue and fix it at its source? This is where functional nutrition and functional medicine come in. Both focus on a personalized, holistic approach recognizing humans as unique individuals. It acknowledges every patient's specific needs and motivations.

Let's look into how it works.

Functional Nutrition vs. Functional Medicine

Functional nutrition is all-encompassing. It takes into consideration the person in their entirety. It uses this information to understand what foods and nutrients they need to function at an optimal level. Through a similar principle, functional medicine considers the entire physiological system of a person to understand its needs. A functional medicine practitioner examines the interrelation between every part of a person's body to determine the root of one's health problems. This then enables the medication to have a more permanent impact. Interestingly, functional nutrition was inspired by the work of Jeffrey Bland, in 1990 and his focus on functional medicine and integrative healthcare.

The Principles Behind a Nutrition Plan

Prior to creating a functional nutrition plan, your medical and genetic history , body's unique systems, lifestyle habits, and potential nutrient deficiencies will be examined at length. After their evaluation, they will set about creating a customized nutrition plan for you.

So what do these plans focus on? All About Essentials. There are certain essential nutrients that form the core of your body's functioning. A good plan focuses on including all these nutrients in proportions that work best for your body.

These include things like:

• Probiotics
• Vitamins
• Minerals
• Proteins
• Fats
• Carbohydrates

and everything in between that your body requires to sustain itself.

Emphasis on Quality

The source of the nutrients is just important. By emphasizing the quality of your food, you cut the harmful effects of processed foods. You also cut over-indulgent meals, and other food that aggravate or triggers poor health conditions.

Eliminate the Toxic Breeding Ground

Being on a functional diet is great, but your body needs to be dressed to receive. So, naturally, a key point of focus includes the enhancement of your digestive tract and its ability to effectively process foods and nutrients. Symptoms like leaky gut syndrome, nausea, diarrhea indicate that something isn't quite right down there. Your digestive tract is not processing foods as it should, and it's your body's way of telling you to look into it!

Gut Health and Microbiomes

Your gut contains tons of bacteria. Don't worry, its usually the good kind. They're are responsible for healthy digestion, body weight composition and tons more. A nutritionist must ensure that your diet incorporates probiotics and other gut-friendly nutrients.

Biochemical Compositions

Analysis of your food's chemical compounds along with your digestive tract functionality is important. This enables practitioners to better understand what your body needs. This part of the process is very important. This is because of the unprecedented chemicals our body encounters on a regular basis. Pesticides and synthetic chemical enhancements are consistently used in farming and plant growth.

The Effect on Your Body

The goal is to achieve harmonious balance within your systems through nutritional intervention. By replacing unhealthy foods with healthier alternatives, incorporating the right portions of nutrients needed, it meets deficiencies and reduces the surpluses. This brings back optimal, sustainable function within the body.

Factors like sleep, emotional well-being and lifestyle are already recognized as inter-related. And so your diet is focused on meeting nutritional requirements necessary to optimize these functions. This rebalancing act within your system enables your body to find a routine that maximizes its efficiency and wellness.

Exploring the Field

This field is recognized as a futuristic approach to health and diet. Concepts like patient subjectivity and holistic treatments are the foundation of the field. All About You: A Patient-Centric Approach

A major reason for its popularity is its focus on customized diets and personalized plans. It eliminates the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, it recognizes individual experience and lifestyle as influential factors of health. Understanding a patient's story is the primary responsibility of every functional nutritionist or medical practitioner.

This means analysis of:

• Genetics
• Medical history
• Allergies and environmental triggers
• Mental health

and more. A whole picture requires a whole study.

A Holistic View

Secondly, it also takes a holistic view of a person's health. This includes the physical, mental and physiological analysis of a person. This helps a nutritionist understand their needs in every segment of their being. Other diets are generally, singularly focused on objectives like "weight loss" or "muscle gain". This, however, aims at "optimal functioning" of the entire body, mind, and soul.

Fully Functional: Combining Medication with Diet

For optimal results, a combination of both, functional nutrition and medicine are ideal. Both follow the same principle. They understanding individual experience, predispositions, inter-connectedness and overall impact. When practiced together your health concerns are tackled at the root. Along with that, there's a simultaneous focus on improving other aspects of your life. Functional medicine, like, nutrition is designed to focus on the patient and not the disease. This big-picture focus with an analysis of the little things that create it is essential for optimal wellness. Want to give functional medicine a shot? Get in touch for a FREE consultation and let's explore what we can do for you!