Podcast What is Functional Medicine? | Functional Medicine Series Episode 1

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Dr. Andrew Wong 

Welcome friends to a special series on the Capitol Integrative Health podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Andrew Huang. And this is a podcast that is dedicated to exploring the root causes of both disease and wellness. I am honored to be a co founder of Capitol Integrative Health Clinic in Washington DC area with a mission to create a global revolution in health care by educating, leading and inspiring people towards optimal health and true well being.

One of the key modalities we utilize in our clinic to help patients and be of service is functional medicine. We’re excited to offer you this series is an insightful look into functional medicine, otherwise known as root cause resolution medicine, and walk me through case studies that emphasize how we think about and approach holistic care with our patients. We’re kicking it off with today’s episode, all about the power of functional medicine and how the experience of working with a functional medicine practitioner differs from conventional medicine. So let’s start with what functional medicine is.

Functional Medicine seeks to understand and address the underlying root cause imbalances and dysfunctions that contribute to disease rather than merely treating and mandating symptoms. In addition, function of essence aims to identify and treat the underlying root causes that contribute to health issues. And some of these subcategories would be things like nutritional deficiencies, imbalances in hormones, inflammation, stress and gut health. In addition, functional medicine emphasizes personalized and individualized care, taking into account each patient’s unique genetic makeup, lifestyle, environment and medical history for true prevention.

Now, let’s talk about how functional medicine is similar and also how it differs from conventional medicine. So both functional medicine and conventional medicine, aim to be of service to patients. But they do that in different ways. Conventional medicine is the what of medicine, focusing on what the diagnosis is, how do we treat that it deals specifically with diseases or symptoms, and often uses standardized protocols or guidelines.

Modern conventional medicine is critical in playing a central role in life saving measures. For instance, if you were to, if someone was to break their leg or need a surgery, or need some acute care, we would definitely want conventional medicine and play there. Now let’s get more specific on some of the guiding principles of functional medicine. So functional medicine is the why of medicine. Why is someone not feeling well? Why is someone having a symptom? Or why are they having misdiagnosis? What are the root causes for what is going on, as to contributing to that diagnosis, whether it’s what it called antecedents. Triggers are mediators, which are things that precede things that trigger and then things that perpetuate an ongoing illness. At the same time, we think about why people are well, how they stay well, and how they’re optimized in terms of their wellness. And that’s also part of functional medicine as well. So some of the important things we look at are the patient’s story. That’s their history, their timeline of how disease are imbalanced developed, and what factors that may have affected that development. For instance, when we look at someone’s gut microbiome, which actually influences all the body, not just the gut information about whether you were born vaginally, vaginally, or by C section can give us information about the health of the blank microbiome even many years later, decades later, after that birth.

Root Cause physiology is understanding the functioning of the body systems and how they’re functioning and connected together. We think of this as also called systems biology. For example, we look closely at the functioning of factors such as hormones, which can affect everything from metabolism and energy to mood and digestion. A easy example of this is the thyroid gland. If you feel right below your Adam’s apple, there’s a butterfly shaped gland called the thyroid. And even though the thyroid is in the neck area, it actually affects your gut it affects your immune system affects your brain affects all of your cells. And finally, lifestyle factors looking at some of the fundamental and foundational lifestyle factors that really impact health, such as sleep, relaxation, stress and stress management, movement, nutrition and relationships. For example, we aim to understand in functional medicine how these lifestyle factors, like lack of quality relationships, or lack of sleep may affect your physiology. Again, these seemingly very basic lifestyle and foundational factors have an outsized impact on your physiology, because they affect all of your biology.

So let’s talk also about what can you expect and an appointment with a functional medicine practitioner. So like most people, we know that time is valuable in fact that you cannot really rush a relationship with a you know, eight minute speed dating, for instance, and it’s that way with your practitioner, we do spend time getting to know you and building relationship because time Time is necessary to build relationships, we will listen to your story to get a fuller understanding of your history and your health goals. And again, the emphasis on listening. Because listening is often where the key moments and key clues are in terms of what’s going on with a patient with with you or your symptoms. For instance, if your health issues are revealed, we will also with a functional lens or a functional I would say, our eyes to eyes review past Labs is some of the labs that you might have kind of taken before it might have been quote unquote, within normal limits. But we want to look at not just what is normal, but what is optimal. So the other way to say that is when you look at your lab, and you look at your health history, you want to not focus only on survival, but also thriving. So we’ll make a plan for, for instance, other specialized tests, that might take a deeper dive than you’re used to that might under uncover root cause physiology issues that might be going on that are causing symptoms or imbalances, if those tests may be benefiting you clinically, and if there’s a treatment plan that results from those test results. In addition, we do take a team approach in our clinic. And whether that’s inside or outside the clinic, we’re going to recommend often other practitioners that could join your care team, could be a nutritionist could be a physical therapist could be a medical specialist that you may need to see. So we will include both sort of integrative and functional, but also conventional specialists as needed to your team. And that’s part of the recommendation again, for a whole person care.

So in addition to that, we know that lifestyle is fundamental foundational, as I was saying before, really identifying important lifestyle changes. And sometimes those changes can be very small. But sometimes again, small steps can result in outsized results. There’s a famous saying that says that a single step actually starts the journey of 1000 miles. And the idea of this is even if you start with, you know a little bit of a lifestyle habit in areas like sleep or stress management, that could create a really big impact on your health down the line and really help with both prevention and optimization of wellness. We may I also recommend different medications or supplements, and manage those as needed, again, as ways to help with the lifestyles ways to help with things that will balance and optimize your physiology. So looking at functional medicine is taking a deeper dive that we’re used to necessarily in conventional medicine, but working with conventional medicine as well depending on your health issues. And again, looking at this from a systems biology root cause approach to try to see what’s going on with you. If you want to learn more or to look for a practitioner that is trained in functional medicine, it’s important to understand that there’s lots of different trainings out there. And it’s important to find someone that that is really trained and knows what they’re talking about and can work with you in a very effective and professional and safe manner. So here’s some resources that we recommend. We do like the Institute for Functional Medicine. This is something that we emphasize here in our clinic ifm.org is a great place to start that is the main website with more information about functional medicine, and a sub category of that website is called ifm.org. Forward slash, find a practitioner, find a practitioner is find and then the hyphen, a hyphen practitioner. And that’s a great search tool to find a practitioner near you. You can input your zip code or state or city, and it’ll find some practitioners near you, and give you their contact information.

So in the next episodes of this series, now that you know a little bit more about functional medicine, root cause resolution medicine, we’re going to take a tour of functional medicine a bit and give you a firsthand look at how we work with real life patients. So we’ll follow six different case studies. In the following areas. They include gut health gut is often considered the foundation of functional medicine because that’s often where health begins and where disease can began. So healing the gut can really heal, take a can can go a long way towards healing the whole body. So gut health is the first one we’re going to start with. In episode two. We’re going to continue with toxins and environmental health, hormone health, brain health, heart health and immune health. Notice that we actually said health rather than disease because other diseases is a focus of medicine, and it’s something that’s focused on in functional medicine. We know that also by improving and optimizing health and wellness. A lot of times disease can go away or get ameliorated as a side a side benefit of optimizing your own body’s biological terrain, and focusing on health. So thank you so much for joining us today. And we’re excited to share our next episode in this functional medicine series on gut health.

Dr. Andrew Wong 

Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of Capitol Integrative Health podcast. A quick reminder that the information we share on this podcast is meant for educational and informational purposes only. It’s not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. We highly recommend that You speak to a qualified health care provider before making any medical or healthcare decisions. If you enjoy this episode, please take a few moments to subscribe and leave us a review. Your reviews help us reach more people and continue to offer innovative insights and information to better optimize your health and wellness.