Why choose a function

al medicine doctor?

-Dr. Samantha

Boldt

The doctor of the future will give no medicine ,

but will instruct his patients in care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.

Despite spending more on health care than the next top ten spending countries combined, America still has more chronic illnesses and a shorter life span than most other industrialized nations. An alarming number of people are suffering from fatigue, headaches, pain, indigestion, skin problems, and more, and the medical community is failing to provide an answer.

Our infant mortality rate, meaning how many babies don’t make it through their first year of life, is one of the highest of

the industrialized nations.

When a study was done comparing the healthcare system of the United States to eleven other countries. The United States

came in last place in numerous categories.

When expanded to a global scale, we can see that we’re number 37th in the world in health care. The rating was determined by multiple categories, including efficiency, cost, number of healthy people, life span, and more.

So what are we doing wrong? The key word is prevention. These other countries focus on how to prevent patients from ever having health problems rather than focusing on what to do once they’re sick!

Most people have no idea

how good their bodies are

designed to feel.

In the United States, it is common for people to deal with fatigue, aches and pains, heartburn, headaches, and other maladies, and just consider them to be a normal part of life. However, they are not!

There is a reason our bodies feel the way they do, and functional medicine is here to find that reason. The next few pages will give you a good idea of what functional medicine is, how it is different from the current model of healthcare, and how it can help you!

Functional Medicine Interprets Labs Differently

Functional medicine interprets labs differently. Normally, when you get your bloodwork done you will notice that there is a reference range on the side. So how do they determine these reference ranges? Each lab does their own set of tests and determines their own normals. A few hundred “healthy” people, meaning that they have no diagnosed diseases, have their blood values drawn and averaged, and that creates the normal range.

However, even though they may not have a diagnosed disease, many of these people are still suffering from fatigue, upset stomach, headaches, heartburn, pain, and more. While these may not be the most detrimental of problems, they are still not what we consider perfect health. These problems are reflected in the blood work. So the normal ranges being used are not truly normal and not truly healthy. That is why functional medicine practitioners use a different set of ranges as well as a tighter set of ranges.

While there are many things that modern medicine is needed and good at, one of the big things they are failing with is prevention. The way bloodwork is read is that you reach a certain number, and all of a sudden POOF! You have a disease. But there is a big hill to go up or down to reach that number. Most medical doctors just don’t have the training to see these patterns in the blood and step in before the patient reaches that critical number.

Functional medicine practitioners are trained to look at a patient’s bloodwork and know that in, let’s say 5-10 years, that magic number is where a patient is going to be if they don’t do something to change. So let’s make a change now!

Functional Medicine Practitioners Often Run More Extensive Labs

In addition to interpreting the labs that mainstream medical practitioners run differently, functional medicine practitioners also tend to run additional lab markers. Typically the labs in the standard model of care diagnose a disease so that it can be matched with a corresponding pharmaceutical drug. If there is no drug to help with a certain step or pathway in a patient’s physiology, that test is not normally run, because medical doctors don’t normally know anything else to do. Therefore, the labs your doctor runs are adequate if he’s just prescribing medications, but they’re very much incomplete from a functional medicine perspective.

All the thyroid markers instead of just TSH and T4.

For Example……

Here’s an example using the thyroid. Many people today are having hypothyroid symptoms, but their blood tests don’t reflect what they are feeling. Mostly that’s because there are only two markers being tested, TSH and T4.

Now this picture shows the process of thyroid hormones being made, circulating through the blood, and attaching to cells to properly stimulate them. Each star represents a different step and a different place to test hormone levels, proteins, and enzymes involved in the process. Why it became normal to test only two of these steps, especially when the patient is having symptoms, it is unclear. However, once we start looking at the whole pathway, it is easier to find where there is a breakdown and how to best help the patient.

Functional Medicine Practitioners Customize Health

Care

Once you’re labeled with a disease in mainstream medicine, you’re given the same medications everyone else with that disease is given. This cookie cutter approach works sometimes, but more often than not, it fails and causes other problems in the long run. Functional medicine takes into account that we’re all designed a little differently, so what works for one person isn’t necessarily best for you. A tailored, comprehensive health program addresses you as the unique individual that you are.

Functional Medicine Practitioners Spend More One-

On-One Time With Patients

Mainstream medicine is very focused on symptom care. That is why every six months you typically wait an hour at your doctor’s office for a five-minute visit. At this visit, they look at your bloodwork, match up the numbers to any drug they think you need, and send you on your way. This system is failing millions of Americans suffering from chronic health problems!

Again, we are all different. Functional medicine practitioners take the time to determine what a patient’s lifestyle is like, their stress levels, what they eat, and how much movement they get in a day. All of these impact our health and must be considered.

Functional Medicine Practitioners Address

Underlying Dysfunctions

In our picture of the tree, you can see that we have the leaves and branches above the ground and labeled with different conditions. There is depression and anxiety, heartburn, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, cancer, allergies, and more. In mainstream medicine, once you are labeled with one of these, that is normally as far as the doctor looks.

Functional medicine practitioners like to go below the surface to the ROOT of the problem. Nobody has heartburn because of a Prilosec deficiency, and nobody has high cholesterol because of a Lipitor deficiency. That just isn’t how our bodies were designed to function! Once we begin looking at things like inflammation, nutrient absorption, and stress levels, we can understand why the body is reacting the way it is and know how to help it.

Functional Medicine Practitioners Don’t Shy Away From Natural

Treatments

Functional medicine is not anti-medication, but we do ask what the patient’s most effective option is and what causes the fewest side effects. Very few times is the answer medication. Somewhere in the last hundred years, mainstream medicine grew away from the thought that what we put inside our bodies isn’t really affecting our health and that it’s not to blame for the huge increase in chronic conditions. However, scientific studies have shown that to be wrong with the law of 20.

The law of 20 states that twenty years after refined carbohydrates and processed foods are introduced into a society, they will begin to suffer from problems like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other illnesses. The more that society eats that kind of food, the more illnesses they have. This has been shown time and time again, country after county.

So no, we don’t shy away from natural treatments. We embrace them. More often than not, natural treatments will be more effective and have much fewer side effects in the long run!