Is integrative medicine the same as functional medicine? And if so, isn't it mere nonsense?

Rick Flowe | Sep 30, 2019 | Category: Medical clinic in Washington, District of Columbia

GW Center for Integrative Medicine - All questions

Address: 908 New Hampshire Ave NW #200, Washington, DC 20037, USA

Jonathan Hickson | Sep 30, 2019

Hello Rick. To answer your question functional and integrative medicine are 2 distinct things. Functional medicine if you want to get technical, requires an in depth understanding of foundational clinical sciences to target the root cause of someone's ailments. That means understanding the physiologic, biochemical and cellular nature of a organism to optimize their health status and prevent/treat disease. Integrative medicine is more on the macroscopic side of treatment where you use different healing modalities and specialties to address a person's health issues. Integrative medicine would ideally use a general practitioner, gastroenterologist, nutritionist, acupuncturist and/or a meditative provider to treat a patient with back pain due to Crohn's or anxiety from dysbiosis. If you're still confused or want to learn more, there's 100s of 1000s of research papers out there or you can actually try to set up some time to talk with an integrative provider.

Tynan Marie | Sep 30, 2019

This is what I found on the differences. I like the GWCIM has doctors of all backgrounds (MD, ND, OD) and they work to treat the whole person not just alleviate a symptom. https://www.patronusmedical.com/blog/functional-medicine-vs-integrative-medicine

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