You truly don’t realize the value of good health until the moment you fall sick. Even a common cold can make us realize how miserable being sick is. Good health is probably our greatest asset.
Modern medicine has come leaps and bounds in terms of healthcare practices. But often, they disregard something important; the patient. A patient who doesn’t feel “right” but has no discernible issues on reports and tests is often dismissed. At other times, a patient’s problems are symptomatically treated, and the root cause often goes untreated.
It is for these reasons that functional medicine has been a growing field in the recent few years. Functional medicine prioritizes the importance of individualizing a medical treatment to a patient. Many patients often have very harmful misconceptions about functional medicine and are reticent to try it out.
This is why we have listed some of the common misconceptions about functional medicine and clear the air on them.
- Functional medicine is too expensive
This is probably one of the most common falsehoods stated about functional medicine. While it is true that functional medicine is often not covered 100% by insurance companies as their policies lag behind, functional medicine isn’t inherently expensive.
In fact, it helps patients save money over a longer period of time. Instead of managing chronic symptoms with a battery of drugs and procedures, functional medicine tries to cure whatever ailment is plaguing the patient in the first place.
In traditional practice, your cost of healthcare is only going to rise higher as you age. In functional medicine, you learn how to take care of your body so that you may avoid incurring such costs and expenses.
- If it worked then why did no doctor do it before
This is also a common misconception about functional medicine. Functional medicine has a completely different set of principles guiding it than traditional medicine. Doctors practicing traditional medicine are operating on a symptom-specific approach with no individualized thoughts regarding the drugs prescribed. This generic approach works well for common diseases and issues but fails to have a long-term effect on more chronic illnesses.
A doctor practicing traditional medicine will be able to help you in symptom management, while a functional medicine doctor will work with you to get rid of the cause of the symptoms in the first place.
- Functional medicine disregards science and modern medicine completely
Many people believe that functional medicine doctors are just naturopaths. That is not the case! Functional medicine doesn’t eschew science. It is grounded in science but takes an artful, individualized approach in order to solve patient’s issues.
A good functional medicine facility like Active Edge Functional Medicine will combine the two schools of medicine to help with a patient’s symptoms and provide a long-term solution that doesn’t rely on just taking a battery of drugs for the rest of your life.
Conclusion
Functional medicine is a legitimate and wonderful school of medicine that seeks to cure patients suffering from chronic problems holistically. While it can do wonders, many patients aren’t even truly aware of what it can do and what it really is. By clearing the air on some common misconceptions, perhaps we have convinced you to at least try functional medicine before knocking it off.