Functional medicine is often referred to as an evolutionary, or even a revolutionary, practice of medicine. Yet just the opposite is true. Functional medicine is a back-to-basics approach to healthcare that honors the human body as an innately intelligent machine whose natural state is health.
There is no question that there is a lot of “noise” in our lives today—from stress to inflammatory foods to environmental toxins—that is causing us to be less well. As functional medicine practitioners, we seek to identify these factors and strip them away, one by one, to help our patients restore their bodies to a natural state of wellness and achieve their full healing potential.
We are often asked, “What is functional medicine? Is it the same as conventional or alternative medicine? Is it another term for lifestyle medicine? Is it based on science? Will it replace my conventional doctor?”
Functional medicine is restorative and preventative healthcare. It empowers people to take control of their own health under the guidance of caring and skilled healthcare professionals.
The primary goal of functional medicine is to co-create optimal, vital health. At Princeton Integrative Health, we help our patients to achieve this by:
- Shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered focus of wellness care
- Getting to the root cause of disease and dysfunction
- Identifying the healing opportunities in every patient
- Focusing on nutritional, environmental and lifestyle intervention, education and support to influence long-term health
- Seeking to reduce the dependency on medication, when appropriate
We won't just give you a pill to help you feel better, but a prescription for lifelong health. We treat you holistically to bring your systems into balance. We partner with you to stay ahead of the game, before symptoms are present, by identifying and addressing underlying issues and abnormalities that will prevent your body from functioning optimally. Most of the time, these abnormalities can be boiled down to one thing: inflammation caused by stress.
Stress is an interesting thing. When we talk about stress, most people think about external stressors—that deadline at work, the fight they had with their spouse, their kid being bullied at school. This is all the mental, emotional and physical stuff we all deal with on a daily basis. What most people don’t realize is that we also have significant internal stressors; these are things that we can’t often see but most often feel in the form of dysfunction.
These “hidden” stressors affect our:
- Hormones
- Immune system
- Digestion
- Detoxification
- Energy production
- Nervous system
When any of the above are out of balance, it can throw other systems and functions out of balance, which leads to an even greater cascade of stress and further issues.
We look at all of these factors at Princeton Integrative Health. Our goal is to help you to identify and understand the dysfunction that is occurring at the hidden level. This is where healing begins. And every facet of your life gets better.
