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v t e

Functional medicine is a form of alternative medicine that is dedicated to finding the root causes and contributing factors that lead to disease and correcting them or correcting for them. It is all about genetics and environment. Functional medicine often concerns itself with single nucleotide polymorphisms, kind of like a mutation but much more common. Certain SNPs can lead to nutrient deficiencies in an individual with a good diet and good habits simply because they have an alteration in a biochemical pathway that causes their body to be less efficient at metabolizing that nutrient. Many people for example are poor methylators, meaning their biochemistry has difficulty adding CH3 to another molecule and methyl group. In one of the most common and Famous SNPs is MTHFR, recipients of this SNP have great difficulty methylating Folic Acid or Folate, this leads to increase chances of many health problems, including heart disease, miscarriage, and birth defects of the neural tube, like spina bifida. (FM) What Is It?

Functional medicine deals with putting back what should be there for example taking methylfolate instead of regular folate during pregnancy or to prevent heart disease and other folate deficiency diseases.  Enhancing biochemical pathways for optimal health naturally. 
It is often accused of being unscientific, but is actually based on cutting edge science. 
It is often also accused of being dangerous by pharmaceutically oriented doctors, but in reality it is extensive diagnostics to find the reasons a symptom or disease is present and reversing that or enhancing a biochemical pathway to heal the body naturally. 
It follows the hippocratic oath beautifully "above all do no harm".  Functional medicine is concerned as well with environment, both internal and external.  Removing toxins from the diet such as pesticides, GMOs, artificial sweeteners, and restoring the food a person takes in back to what nature intended, organically grown fruits and vegetables and wild game or organically raised meat.  It also focuses on discovering allergies and sensitivities and eliminating them and then healing the GI tract and the immune system to eliminate the allergy or immune dysfunction.  

Drugs and Surgery are often considered a last resort or secondary to reversing the cause or making up for deficiencies in biochemical pathways. Sometimes there is too much damage and they are a reasonable option to have the best quality of life.

Functional medicine considers each patient to be unique in contrast to standard western medicine which considers patients to be more similar. Functional medicine considers a more narrow range of normal as compared to standard western medicine. Functional medicine doctors are concerned with true prevention of disease by finding imbalances and slower working biochemical pathways before disease occurs or in the earliest stages if possible. Standard western medicine's idea of prevention is concerned with screening for early disease detection and earlier intervention. True disease prevention is barely on the radar, and is limited to height and weight charts and exercise mostly.

Testing procedures and treatments are often rejected by standard western medicine because of a lack of understanding and a bias towards what traditional doctors have known and are comfortable with.

Standard western medicine derives it's validity from double blind placebo controlled studies, which lend themselves well to testing drugs, but not many other treatments. Functional medicine and other natural treatments concern themselves with outcome studies.

Treatments, practices, and concepts will generally be those not supported by medical evidence.

Institute for Functional Medicine

Functional medicine was invented by chemist Jeffrey Bland. He and Susan Bland founded the Institute for Functional Medicine in 1991 as a division of HealthComm. That year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said that Jeffrey Bland's corporations HealthComm and Nu-Day Enterprises had falsely advanced claims that their products could alter metabolism and induce weight loss. The FTC found that Bland and his companies violated that consent order in 1995 by making more exaggerated claims. The UltraClear dietary program was said to provide relief from gastrointestinal problems, inflammatory and immunologic problems, fatigue, food allergies, mercury exposure, kidney disorders, and rheumatoid arthritis. The companies were forced to pay a $45,000 civil penalty.

The opening of centers for functional medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and at George Washington University has been described by Gorski as an "unfortunate" example of pseudoscientific quackery infiltrating medical academia.

Reception

In 2014, the American Academy of Family Physicians withdrew granting of course credits for functional medicine courses, having identified some of its treatments as "harmful and dangerous" In 2018, it partly lifted the ban, but only to allow teaching an overview of functional medicine, not to teach its practice.

References

1. Sampson, Wallace (October 30, 2008). "Functional Medicine – New Kid on the Block". Science-Based Medicine.
2. "Our Mission". December 2014.
3. Leyton E (2006). "Functional medicine". Can Fam Physician. 52 (12): 1540. PMC 1783750. PMID 17279230.
4. ^ Barrett, Stephen (September 11, 2013). "Some Notes on Jeffrey Bland and Metagenics". Quackwatch. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
5. "Founders". www.functionalmedicine.org. Institute for Functional Medicine. n.d. Retrieved November 10, 2014.
6. Cite error: The named reference quackademic was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. Bellamy J (26 October 2017). "AAFP: Functional Medicine lacks supporting evidence; includes 'harmful' and 'dangerous' treatments". Science-Based-Medicine.
8. Bellamy J (27 October 2018). "AAFP should publish research behind finding that functional medicine lacks evidence, contains harmful and dangerous practices". Science-Based-Medicine.

Further reading

• Gorski, David (14 April 2014). "Bill and Hillary Clinton go woo with Dr. Mark Hyman and 'functional medicine'". Science-Based Medicine.

• Pseudoscience
• Alternative medicine
• Health fraud