Functional and preventive medicine
Functional medicine is an integrative approach that considers the range of factors that influence people’s health. It seeks to supplement the standard of care of mainstream medicine by addressing underlying lifestyle, mind-body, environmental and metabolic issues.
I spend much of my continuing professional development activity in functional medicine education so that I can advise clients about health and lifestyle options they can consider around their core treatment in acupuncture.
Functional medicine is based on science but also includes emerging and complementary therapies. It helps people navigate areas such as nutrition, sleep hygiene, and stress reduction. It takes a patient centred approach, drawing upon clinical experience to find strategies relevant to a person’s situation. While focussed on healing, and particularly chronic conditions, it also emphasises the value of preventive medicine. It can be of value to those who want to address underlying causes of health and disease, and who want to optimise wellness when ill health is not (yet) present.
Some of my interests include mind-body connection, gut health and building healthy microbiome, plant-based diet, electrical processes in the body and EMFs in the environment (this is linked to my interest in electroacupuncture) and the contribution of respiratory health to wellbeing and metabolism.
In practical terms this might involve discussing methods such as earthing (grounding) to balance out EMFs, diet, supplements and probiotics, and breathing, exercise and relaxation techniques.
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Healthy lifestyles are easier said than done in today’s complicated world. I’m not interested in judgemental approaches, only practical ones. It’s more that a number of things can cause our cups to overflow. By exploring options with clients who are interested we can consider what might stop that happening, whether you are seeking to heal or improve a condition or attending my clinic for health maintenance and preventive medicine, which I also encourage, as it is the ideal way to practice medicine in TCM the tradition.