Why and How to use Functional Medicine Evaluation and Treatment in Your Practice

This is a subject that is so simple and yet so broad it could take one minute or one year to cover all of the positive reasons to use Functional Medicine (FM) in your practice.  The first and most important reason is to help patients to a greater level.   Without FM evaluation, how are you going to know what the problem is?  How are you going to know when you have facilitated healing or just temporarily reduced symptoms?  If you need nutrition, then what kind, how often, for how long and what is the maintenance dose.  How does the patient get educated if you don’t have the picture to show them?

I was carried into a chiropractor’s office for my first adjustment in 1966 and walked out an hour later.  I have seen so many miracles in my 44 years of practice that impossible is not in my vocabulary.  I have found, even though I learn more each year, it is still harder to get long lasting results like I used to.  People are more toxic, more stressed, more overweight, more blood sugar problems and more deficiencies than ever before.

I am a diplomat in the ICAK and am good at muscle testing and muscle response testing.  Yet in this day of evidence based health care, we benefit from using standard accepted science based tests and science based nutritional recommendations.  We have seen many patients that we would have been guessing instead of knowing if we had not run appropriate blood and many times hair tests to see the picture.  I use AK with every patient and I compliment my evaluation with functional lab testing.

Let me share a case history that paints the picture from of a friend of mine Dr Osborne:  “Ginger was only 9 years old when her mother brought her to my office.  She had been diagnosed with a debilitating disease called juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and her doctors didn’t know if she would make it. In fact, her situation was so dire that the Make-A-Wish Foundation stepped in and granted Ginger her wish to go to Alaska to see whales off the coast with her family.

Imagine going through years of hospital trips, doctors’ visits, and horrible pain all before you reach the age of 10. This was Ginger’s daily reality—until I saw her.  After an extensive exam and laboratory testing, I identified Ginger as having non-celiac gluten sensitivity. We changed her diet—not just cutting out wheat, but overhauling even the hidden sources of gluten in other so called "gluten free" grains. 
 
Today, Ginger is grain free and very much alive. She no longer has a plastic stent in her arm. She is growing normally. She doesn’t need to take any medications. She plays on her school volleyball team and has a new lease on life. As long as she avoids all grains, Ginger is symptom free.

But if she does eat food that contains gluten, her joints swell. Despite her youth, Ginger is able to stick with her diet because the correlation between what she eats and the swelling and pain is undeniable. There is no question that Ginger is alive today because she is grain free. Does this sound like a fad diet?"

Of course he used specific nutritional supplements to complement dietary change.  He is making a point here in this article that testing is ‘to know’ and not testing is ‘not to know’.  The other part of the issue is you must follow through with the needed treatment to get the desired results, once you know the problems.  If you tell someone you think they are deficient in vitamin D, C, E, or are gluten sensitive, that gets you very little.  If you show them in print what the problem is, you have a 75% better chance they will do what it takes to get results.

The process I love the most is the Brimhall Advantage SBN program through Dr. Van Merkle.  At the end of this article is a webinar with more of the advanced SBN  insights.  Dr Merkle is one of our Homecoming 2016 Speakers and will give you the basics and then into some of the newer more advanced technologies of testing.

Even if you have never done blood, hair or urine challenge testing, Dr Merkle’s program teaches you and the patient at the same time.  The report is complete and science based from the literature.  You do not need to know how to build a car, just drive it in the beginning.  Please look at the Webinar included at the bottom of this article for some advanced insight.  Join us at Homecoming 2016 where Dr Merkle, Dr Childs, Dr Brett B and myself will be covering the basics and advanced topics.

See you at the upcoming webinars and at Homecoming 2016 FOR THE REST OF THE STORY!

Yours In Health, Wealth and Happiness,