The support of patients and friends is important to the development of functional medicine. There are hundreds of thousands of healthcare practitioners today who know nothing about this important field. IFM needs your support to reach greater numbers of clinicians and to educate them in improving the prevention, assessment, and treatment of complex, chronic disease. All of us are patients at one time or another during our lives, and most of us with any significant experience of today’s healthcare system have probably thought: “There must be a better way!” To help those patients who suffer from complex, chronic disease, The Institute for Functional Medicine teaches healthcare practitioners a better way.

Have you ever wanted a doctor who . . .

• Really listens to your story? (The average physician interrupts the patient within 30 seconds.)
• Takes into account the dietary, exercise, work, social, psychological, and spiritual influences in your life?
• Offers treatments other than expensive drugs (with multiple side effects) or surgeries?
• Understands and explains the complex interactions among all your body systems? (Do you know, for example, how headaches can arise from problems in your digestive system? Or how arthritis symptoms can be a function of food sensitivity?)
• Acts to prevent disease, rather than waiting until it can be diagnosed to offer treatments?
• Has sophisticated tools to work with your mind, body and spirit to maximize healing?

Then we think you want a functional medicine practitioner.

You may be thinking, “That all sounds promising, but exactly how is this accomplished, particularly in today’s high-pressure world of managed care?” You are right to be skeptical. It is very challenging to practice functional medicine in a system that demands the doctor pick the diagnosis, prescribe the drug, and get on to the next patient in about 10 to 12 minutes.

But we know that physicians can, in fact, change the way they practice, once they realize that the knowledge and skills they need can be acquired. The Institute for Functional Medicine teaches not only the necessary science and clinical skills, but also the critical thinking pathways that make functional medicine effective. We provide many useful tools for the office, such as new questionnaires, assessment forms, and patient handouts. Most important of all, we teach an intellectual matrix for collecting, analyzing and using all the new information for the patient’s benefit.

Without tossing away the system of diagnosis that has enabled all of western medicine to speak a common language, we encourage practitioners to focus on functionality, inside cells, within organs, and among all body systems. Where are things out of balance? Nutrition? Immune system? Hormones? Multiple sites? We teach how to always consider the web, think about the influence of both genetics and environment, and assess aspects of the underlying biochemistry and physiology, so that – when possible – interventions are focused on reorienting and rebalancing functionality (not just using a drug to suppress the symptoms). Dietary and nutritional therapies, lifestyle changes, botanical medicines, and detoxification protocols are among the many tools used by functional medicine practitioners. Ultimately, these physicians are re-enchanted with the practice of medicine — deeply touched to know they can better alleviate suffering, and intellectually stimulated to escape the deadening routine of “cookbook medicine.”

If this view of health care resonates in your mind and heart, we hope you will help support our programs. It’s expensive and time-intensive to teach the way we do. We rely on charitable contributions from individuals and foundations to help generate new programs, scholarships, and general support. We hope you will join the functional medicine community with a contribution today. Thank you!