Functional Medicine

Functional medicine is a systems biology-based approach that focuses on determining and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or differential diagnosis might be one of several contributing to an individual's illness.

A diagnosis can be the result of more than one cause. For example, depression can be caused by various factors, including inflammation. Similarly, a cause such as inflammation can lead to a number of different diagnoses, including depression. The exact manifestation of each cause depends on the person's genes, environment, and lifestyle, and only treatments that address the right cause will have lasting benefits beyond symptom suppression.

The Functional Medicine Model

The functional medicine model evolved from the insights and perspectives of a small group of prominent thought leaders who realized the value of a personalized approach to disease causes based on the evolving research in nutritional science, genomics, as well as epigenetics. These thought leaders discovered ways to use these new advancements in the clinic to address root causes using low-risk treatments that adjust molecular and cellular systems to reverse these drivers of disease.

These functional medicines thought leaders were able to use new research in a way that often brought remarkable results to patients who had previously received unsuccessful treatments. Part of this advancement was a return to scientific concepts of identifying new ways to look for unifying factors at the cellular and systems levels that underlie organism-wide problems.

As others became interested in learning functional medicine, it became essential to systematize the approach so that it could be taught to a wider group of practitioners of differing backgrounds. The IFM approach to applying functional medicine is mainly practiced through a set of tools that formalizes both history-taking and mapping symptoms to the categories of root processes that underlie illness. Three of these devices are the functional medicine Matrix, Timeline, and the GOTOIT framework.

The Functional Medicine Matrix

The functional medicine Matrix helps the clinician in organizing and prioritizing each person's health issues as generated by an in-depth personal, family, social, and medical history. The Matrix is akin to a web decoder-- it organizes what seems to be diverse problems into a complete story to help the clinician acquire a comprehensive perspective of the individual and ultimately promote discussion of complex, chronic illness with the patient.

Timeline

All clinicians take patient history, but what makes the functional medicine Timeline different is that it has the effect of giving the patient understanding of previous life events to encourage them to change and participate in treatment. As an intake tool for organizing the individual's history chronologically, the functional medicine Timeline is a graphical representation that allows clinicians to identify factors that predispose, provoke, and contribute to pathological changes and dysfunctional responses in the individual. In this way, practitioners will have the ability to observe temporal relationships among events, which can reveal cause-effect relationships that might otherwise go undetected. By covering the period from preconception to the present, the Timeline reflects the link between the whole lifespan and one's current health.

GOTOIT

"GOTOIT" is a simple framework practitioner can utilize to identify the root of each individual's disorder and therefore apply personalized treatments that address specific causes. Standing for "Gather, Organize, Tell, Order, Initiate, and Track," GOTOIT is a teaching tool to help practitioners complete the Matrix and Timeline. Utilizing the GOTOIT framework can help providers establish rapport with their patients, identify unhealthy patterns, get to the source of their problem, and propose appropriate, individualized treatments and lifestyle adjustments.

For further information about Dr. Stengler’s practice and his clinic in Carlsbad, California, please visit our website at MarkStengler.com or give us a call at (760) 274-2377