In Partnership with Spire Health Pathways
We invite you to visit with a functional medicine provider at Spire Health Pathways which has partnered with AfterOurs to provide care for individuals who are seeking answers and solutions to symptoms and diseases that do not rely on prescription medications. Visit our website at www.spirehp.com to learn more.
What Is Functional Medicine?
Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a biochemist, and his wife Susan developed the concept of functional medicine in 1990. They were aware that the Western medicine model of naming a disease and then treating those symptoms with medications was not effective when trying to make someone well who had developed chronic symptoms such as fatigue or a chronic disease such as diabetes. What was missing in the current model was a path to healing which would require really understanding why the patient had symptoms or disease and addressing the imbalances in their lives that had created these problems.
The Institute for Functional Medicine was then created by these very forward-thinking individuals and over the years thousands of professionals have been trained using evidence-based science to look at health and illness at a cellular and genetic level with the understanding that disruptions in health occur when an imbalance takes place. The imbalance can be created by nutrient deficiency, an overload of toxins from the environment and diet, or from physical or emotional stresses including a lack of social connection. For many individuals, the imbalance in the body and mind’s functions has more than one area of causation such as sleep issues, poor diet, and lack of exercise and in all cases of disease, inflammation plays a role in what is going wrong.