BW writes: “My husband is a very sick man with several serious medical problems and while I was looking up different medicinal ways of helping him I came across a different way of practicing medicine which is called Functional Medicine. After asking someone about Functional Medicine I was told that it works, and many people have been healed by it. My concern is if you know anything about it and if you do does it have anything to do with New Age or the occult? I do not want us to get involved with anything like that.”Although not inherently New Age, the functional medicine label spans a broad spectrum of practices ranging from evidence-based medical care to New Age alternative treatments that have no scientific validity. This is why it is highly recommended that anyone seeking a functional medicine approach to their condition always do so with a medically trained MD or state-licensed healthcare professional.
Although the functional medicine industry uses the slogan "conventional medicine treats symptoms while functional medicine treats causes," this is more of a marketing claim than reality. Conventional medicine usually starts with identifying what disease or condition a patient has, and what evidence-based treatment is appropriate for it, while functional medicine looks at the underlying factors that might be contributing to the symptoms and seeks to modify those.
For example, suppose a patient complains of chronic fatigue. A conventional physician might evaluate her for anemia, thyroid disease, sleep apnea, depression, medication effects, infection, diabetes, heart disease, etc. If hypothyroidism is diagnosed, the physician treats the hypothyroidism.
A functional-medicine practitioner might investigate many of those same things but place greater emphasis on diet, sleep, stress, exercise, gastrointestinal health, nutritional status, environmental exposures and lifestyle, looking for multiple factors that might be contributing to the fatigue.
Even though functional medicine doctors like to describe their field as "root-cause medicine," this is a misleadling label. Finding the causes of a condition is a fundamental part of medicine - both conventional and functional.
The problem with functional medicine is that practitioners too often stray into questionable areas, particularly where it comes to discovering underlying causes. Some functional-medicine practices attribute vague symptoms to proposed conditions such as "toxins," "adrenal fatigue," "leaky gut," food sensitivities, or vaguely defined "imbalances," and then sell extensive testing and supplement regimens.
A peer-reviewed review of laboratory tests commonly marketed in complementary/alternative medicine found that many have little or no demonstrated clinical usefulness, and warned that questionable results can lead to unnecessary or potentially harmful treatment. One good example is alternative food-sensitivity testing: tests involving food-specific IgG/IgG4, hair analysis, applied kinesiology and several other methods have not been scientifically validated for diagnosing food allergy/intolerance.
This propensity to stray into unscientific medical treatments may be due at least in part to its founder, Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., who was not a medical doctor. He’s a Ph.D. who sells dietary supplements and whose companies have been repeatedly fined by the FTC and FDA for making false medical claims for their products.
This could also explain why the definition of functional medicine is vague, which some say is deliberate in order to facilitate its promotion to the public. However, the website of one its biggest proponents, Dr. Mark Hyman, takes a stab at it by describing it as “an individualized, patient-centered, science-based approach that empowers patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease and promote optimal wellness.”
According to functional medicine critic, Harriet Hall, M.D., “That sounds good, until you realize that it also describes good conventional medicine. Conventional medicine always addresses the underlying causes of disease: when you have appendicitis, you don’t just get morphine for the pain, you get an appendectomy to remove the cause of the pain.”
Conventional doctors also deal with the whole person, and spend time with their patient which is why 70 percent of the diagnostic process is learning the history of the patient.
“As early as ancient Greece, Hippocrates said it was more important to know which person had the disease than to know which disease the person had,” Dr. Hall writes. "Conventional doctors look at genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, family history, social history, even occupation and finances. They routinely ask about things such as tobacco, alcohol, and exercise."
So what’s the difference between conventional and functional medicine? Simple. One relies solely on proven methods for treatment, and the other does not necessarily do so.
For example, some functional medicine practitioners will recommend unscientific treatments such as homeopathy, biopuncture (the injection of homeopathic remedies), unproven nutritional interventions, and detox regimes such as those described above.
This could explain why, as of this writing, there is only a limited amount of research suggesting that functional medicine can be beneficial. For example, a 2019 JAMA Network Open study involving 7,252 patients found that patients treated at Cleveland Clinic's functional-medicine center had greater improvement in patient-reported physical health at six months than primary-care patients. The problem is that the study was not a randomized clinical trial and had flaws that resulted in the findings losing their statistical significance at the 12 month mark. In fact, the authors themselves admitted more studies were needed.
When asked about this lack of testing, Bland replied: “Unfortunately, current research models do not have a way to test each individualized, patient-centered therapeutic plan that is tailored to a person with a unique combination of existing conditions, genetic influences, environmental exposures, and lifestyle choices.”
This explanation doesn’t pass muster with serious scientists, such as Dr. David Gorski of the popular Science-Based Medicine blog.
“Basically, this is a manifesto for doing whatever the heck a physician wants in the name of ‘personalizing’ care,” Dr. Gorski writes. “It’s a lame excuse—the very lamest—and exactly the same excuse that homeopaths, acupuncturists, and the like make for not doing clinical trials testing their quackery . . .”
Because of the inconsistent nature of the functional medicine field, potential patients are advised to make sure the practitioner is an MD or appropriated state-licensed clinician, and that they are willing to coordinate with your physician who will know if they are relying upon scientifically valid methods and treatments.
Red flags would be when a practitioner recommends huge panels of expensive proprietary tests, then diagnoses numerous "imbalances" from those tests; claims that conventional doctors only treat symptoms; recommends routine "detoxification"; large supplement packages sold directly by the practitioner; claims to cure many unrelated diseases; or advises you to discontinue proven medical treatment.
In addition, if you are a Catholic, you are morally obligated to use ordinary (i.e., scientifically proven) means to treat any condition that is life-threatening and/or contagious.
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