Functional Medicine 

If you haven’t heard about it, you soon will and it will benefit your health and life on knowing this.

Functional Medicine was started back in 1990 by Dr Jeffrey Bland (yes a Conventional Medicine Doctor). Dr Bland was concerned about the conventional medical system and:

the increase of diseases in the population,

how we were treating the sickness industry and not teaching people how to be healthy

treating the symptoms and not the cause,

seeing each part of the body as a separate entity rather than what it is which is a complete integrated working system,

how the tests were based on a disease population and not based on a healthy population and were misdiagnosing or worse not diagnosing people until they were in disease state,

how what was being tested was very limited compared to what can be tested and therefore so much about a person’s health was being missed,

How the conventional system was very much Doctor focused with only 5 minute appointments, and

not patient focussed to ask about diet and lifestyle and supplements and drugs and every other body system and taking time to understand.

He started Functional Medicine in America and since then it has grown exponentially in the US and in many other countries.

Yes, but What does this Mean to Me?

It means that most people have a mind-set that they wait until they are in disease state before going to get help. This is usually when it is too late. Functional Medicine Practitioners want to see you before you get to disease state.

Yes, but I Feel Healthy, What Do I Need To Do About This?

There are 1000s of tests that can be performed under Functional Medicine using major diagnostic companies.

However, one major test to be able to give yourself a true health scan at the cheapest price is a Functional Medicine Blood Test.

A basic blood test under conventional medicine usually means just a handful of parameters are being tested and may result in e.g. 5 pages of results. You think you have given yourself a full health scan, but in reality there are many more parameters in your body that are not being tested (in fact 1000s!).

Functional medicine scans 80 parameters and produces a 80+ page report depending on the blood test (it could be more pages).

The results from this gives a true indication of exactly what is happening in your body and you will know exactly what to do with this information with an UHC Functional Medicine Practitioner as they will include diet and lifestyle advice, yours and family history, drugs and supplement advice, every other body system advice along with the blood test report and treatment plan for the best way forward for you.