Understanding Integrated Medicine

Integrated Care is an exciting movement today that is bringing into healthcare much more "comprehensive biological testing panels" that are designed to evaluate each of the body’s systems and provide the clinical data to minimize symptoms and maximize health! Ignoring the levels of critical data points such as antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids or worse the levels of toxic exposures flies in the face of published studies that we must move forward an integrate these advanced precisision health testing into patient comprehensive assessments that shed light on individual health status and not only identify nutritional deficiencies and toxicities but assist the provider in making recommendations for changes that will bring the patient's wellness front and center of their healthcare plan. 

For example, if a patient is struggling with digestive disorders, intestinal inflammation or digestive function and the gut microbiome is not evaluated there is no hope for the patient to be actually cured of the symptoms, and they continue to have digestive symptoms, distention and fatigue. GI dysfunctions are the most overlooked and mismanaged disorders in healthcare today. Traditional healthcare providers are not trained in providing adequate lifestyle and dietary support and even if they were…. the “system” currently does not allow the appointment “time” or the “reimbursement payments” to address it.

There are many ways the body can fall out of balance. Chronic co-morbidities such as GI disorders for example,  are doomed to fail if treatment involves traditional drugs such as anti-inflammatory agents, antacids, or enteric nervous system inhibiting agents. These approaches do not address the underlying causes or triggers for the dysfunctions. Advanced testing looks at clinical data that relates to gut health, nutrition, imune function, genomics and endocrine health. It is absurd for patients to take anti-inflammatory agents for chronic inflammatory conditions without looking for the trigger. We must integrate conservative therapies such as diet, nutrition and lifestyle changes to optimize and modulate physiology instead of supplying agents that dominate over physiology to manage symptoms.
 
Lets look at another example, like "hormones!" It is not enough to identify hormone levels as elevated or deficient. When addressing patients with hormone disorders, the clinician should be albe to do a complex evaluation of hormone synthesis, hormone absorption, transport, peripheral metabolism, detoxification, feedback loop coordination, signal transduction, intercellular transduction, transcription and proteomic responses should be considered. To accomplish this the training in healthcare must be re-defined, not seperate Functional Medicine providers from Traditional Primary Care. That is rediculous and the entire system makes no sense. Prevention should be the highest goal and providers should not avoid the speciality because it pays nothing. If and when chronic disease counld not be prevented or mitigated we need traditional healthcare providers, acute care and hospitals. We must begin to look at aging as a chronic disease and prevent or reverse it while there is time teaching lifestyle strategies and identify the underlying causes of chronic health issues. 
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