Why Functional Medicine

I have been practicing primary care pediatrics for over 25 years. When I first went in to practice, it was rare to see a child with a chronic disease. Now, children with chronic diseases such as asthma, autism, anxiety, ADHD, obesity, and autoimmune disease make up a large part of primary care practice.

Even children who do not have a diagnosable chronic condition are just not as healthy as we want them to be. They struggle with things like constipation, abdominal pain, headaches and food allergies

In conventional medical training we learned primarily how to diagnose and treat acute disease; we did not learn how to create health or reverse a chronic disease. And yet, that is what we are now called upon to do.

Functional medicine is a fundamentally different approach to health, in which making a diagnosis is not the end goal but is just the beginning of the process of trying to discover what led to the child’s symptoms in the first place. It isn't just WHAT does this child have but WHY.

Let me give you a couple of examples to show you how this approach is radically different:

1. ADHD. If a child has problems learning and focusing in school, and meets certain criteria, we say she or he has ADHD. The conventional management of ADHD involves school accommodations, counseling and very often medication to help treat the symptoms. These measures can be very helpful and may be necessary. But we shouldn't stop there. A child with problems learning and focusing often has nutrient deficiencies, food allergies, or an intestinal microbial imbalance that may be contributing to these symptoms. For instance, if there is microbial imbalance in the gut or poor digestion, the body cannot bring on board the right nutrients that are needed to make the chemicals that our brain needs to function well. If there are food allergies, this can cause inflammation in the body which can affect attention and behavior. Addressing these underlying problems can help a child’s symptoms and may avoid, or lessen, the need for medication. If we do not look for and treat these things, we are not doing everything we can to help this child.
2. AUTISM. Autism is considered a brain disorder because children present with problems in development and behavior. If a child meets certain criteria of atypical communication and behavior we say he or she has autism. Conventional management of autism includes strategies to help with behavior and, if the child has difficult behavior problems, we treat with psychiatric medications. What this diagnostic definition does not address are problems in the rest of the body that are an integral part of the underlying inflammation in this condition: things such as gut microbial imbalances, constipation or diarrhea, food allergies, nutrient deficiencies, chronic infections, and toxic exposures, all of which can cause inflammation in the body as well as inflammation in the brain. If we do not look for and treat these things, we are not doing everything we can to help this child.

You may have noticed that I mentioned the word inflammation in both these conditions. That it is because we now know that all chronic diseases have inflammation as their root cause. If we are not looking for and treating the underlying cause of the inflammation in each child with a chronic medical problem, we are not doing everything we can.

Doing everything I can to help a child thrive is why I went in to medicine. Functional medicine has given me the tools to be able to do that.