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Introduction
Functional Medicine is a holistic (body)systems-oriented, personnal model that empowers patients and practitioners to achieve the highest expression of health by working in collaboration to address the underlying causes of disease rather than the traditional disease-centered approach. It is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus to a more patient-centered approach, Functional Medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms. This model emphasizes prevention where the traditional approach is focused on symptoms.

Functional Medicine practitioners spend time with their patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease. In this way, Functional Medicine supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual.

“Disease is neither the starting point nor the end point of illness. It is a pathological process that may not be discovered until decades after the identification of an illness.”. This insight has been the impetus for many of the new approaches to disease prevention and treatment that have emerged over the last 30-40 years. Most of us— scientists and physicians alike—would rather not wait until we have a diagnosable disease to address the underlying problems that, over time, cause the signs and symptoms that influence the development of illness and disease.

A major premise of Functional Medicine is that, using science, clinical wisdom, and innovative tools, we can identify many of the underlying causes of chronic disease and intervene to remediate the dysfunctions, both before and after frank disease is present. People may wonder (quite reasonably) why preventing and treating chronic disease effectively requires something different than is usually available in our very expensive healthcare system. Perhaps the most urgent reason is that a rapidly spreading epidemic of chronic disease has compromised the effectiveness of our healthcare system and threatens to bankrupt both national and global economies. Alarming projections suggest future generations may have shorter, less healthy lives if current trends continue unchecked. current healthcare model fails to confront both the causes of and solutions for chronic disease and must be replaced with a model of comprehensive, personalized care geared to effectively treating and reversing this escalating crisis.

Time is past for the traditional disease-centered approach
The traditional disease centered approach has done a great job. But with its success comes the new reality. It has failed to address chronic disease.

Consider The Facts
Over the last century, there has been a dramatic shift in prevalence from acute to chronic diseases. By 2020, worldwide deaths from chronic disease are projected to total more than twice the number of deaths from infectious disease (50 million vs. 20 million). It is estimated that more than half of all Americans suffer from one or more chronic diseases, and that the 8 million Medicare beneficiaries who have five or more chronic conditions accounted for over two-thirds of the program’s $302 billion in spending in 2004.

Of total healthcare costs in the United States, more than 75% is due to chronic conditions. In 2008, the U.S. spent 16.2% of its GDP ($2.3 trillion) on health care. This exceeded the combined federal expenditures for national defense, homeland security, education, and welfare. By 2023, if we don’t change how we confront this challenge, annual healthcare costs in the U.S. will rise to over $4 trillion, the equivalent—in a single year—of four Iraq wars, making the cost of care using the current model economically unsustainable. If our health outcomes were commensurate with such costs, we might decide they were worth it. Unfortunately, the U.S. spends twice the median per-capita costs of other industrialized countries, as calculated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but has extraordinarily poor outcomes for such a massive investment.