Back Clinic Functional Medicine Team. Functional medicine is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of medical practice to a more patient-centered approach, functional medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms.
Practitioners spend time with their patients, listening to their histories and looking at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease. In this way, functional medicine supports the unique expression of health and vitality for each individual.
By changing the disease-centered focus of medical practice to this patient-centered approach, our physicians are able to support the healing process by viewing health and illness as part of a cycle in which all components of the human biological system interact dynamically with the environment. This process helps to seek and identify genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors that may shift a person’s health from illness to well-being.
Over 60 million Americans suffer from some type of sleep disorder. And as many as 1 in 6 of them use potentially-addictive prescription sleep drugs with harmful side effects, which are associated with a threefold increased risk of cancer and death. It’s important to understand how essential sleep is and how alternative treatment approaches, including integrative functional medicine, are fundamental towards a natural remedy to proper sleep.
How can we promote sleep naturally?
Research from Harvard University has shown that the worker loses 11 times of productivity every year due to insomnia. Meanwhile studies over the past decade have associated poor sleep with dementia, diabetes, obesity, depression, cardiovascular disease and stroke. Billions of dollars per year are spent on costs related to sleepiness, such as missed work days, doctor visits, prescriptions and hospital services for car crash accidents, all thanks directly to individual sleep deprivation. While some of these costs are necessary, getting effective care can make a difference.
Recently, the impact of sleep on health has been getting an increasing number of attention from scientists that are realizing that sleep is an active and dynamic state. The latest attention has been on the importance of adequate sleep for the brain’s physiological maintenance. Turns out, while you sleep a plumbing system called the glymphatic system opens up between the brain cells and literally flushes out toxic molecules involved in neurodegenerative disorders.
This wealth of science could be overpowering, and for many it only adds to the anxiety of “not having sufficient sleep.” According to many integrative and functional medicine practitioners, proper sleep, being an important element in overall health and wellness, can be achieved naturally by following a series of recommendations.
Here are five simple ways to troubleshoot poor sleep now:
Avoid Blue Light Before Bed
The displays of tablets, smartphones and some computers emit a blue wavelength light which affects your Suprachiastmatic Nucleus (SCN), a pinhead sized arrangement that includes 20,000 neurons and controls your sleep cycle, and decreases melatonin generation causing sleep disruptions. If you absolutely must study your phone before bed, get the F.lux app. It’s a program that filters the light mimicking sundown emanating from the device in order that it is blue/black predominant and it’s red overriding and reducing your exposure to blue light during the night.
If you Wake Up, Get Up
In his book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, A. Roger Ekirch clarifies that historically, humans slept in 2 shifts: one to get a couple of hours when the sun went down, and another from the early hours of the morning before dawn. In between, they woke up, often for a couple of hours, to tend the fire, have intercourse or pray, and this was completely normal. It was only after electricity extended daylight past sunset that sleeping patterns changed.
So in the event that you end up waking up in the middle of the night struggling to fall back asleep, don’t toss and turn and cultivate stress and anxiety from being awake, instead, get up and get out of bed, stretch, meditate, make love, and/or do something else that doesn’t require turning on the lights.
Quit Caffeine
Many patients seeking care for their sleeping problems and who do not sleep well claim that there’s no way coffee is the culprit. Research proves that even sleep can be disrupted by only one cup of drip coffee even if taken early in the day. And if you are one of the countless people who have a genetic version of an enzyme called CYP1A2, you may metabolize caffeine more slowly than others, which not just puts you at greater risk of disrupted sleep, in addition, it puts you at greater chance of experiencing a heart attack if you’re a caffeine drinker.
Also remember that sodas would be the No. 1 reason behind American’s increased caffeine ingestion since the 1970’s and that a bit of dark chocolate may have up to 30 milligrams of caffeine.
Take Magnesium Before Bed
Magnesium is an essential mineral that up to 70 percent of the populace is deficient in. It has many uses such as nervous system function, brain and muscle.�Magnesium can relieve anxiety and naturally support deeper sleep.
Face Anxiety Head On
Back in 2011, more than 74 million prescriptions have been written for two drugs, Xanax and Valium, a truth that says Americans have a serious problem with anxiety.
Functional medicine practitioners who begin working with people on their sleeping disorders, begin by looking after the fundamentals, like sleeping in a cool room, cutting on caffeine, and preventing time spent in front of screens and also the blue light that they radiate, but this process is often like peeling back an onion, revealing that the deeper anxiety may be the true reason that drives sleep disturbance at the heart.
If anxiety is causing you to toss and turn or have difficulty falling asleep, try creating a meditation practice before you turn to sleep aids. A scientific review of 47 studies appearing over 3,500 individuals has shown that meditation can decrease anxiety, depression and pain, and even though there are natural non-addictive sleep aids like magnesium, getting to stress at the heart is much better than a tablet, even a normal one.
Qualified and experienced functional medicine practitioners work with patients for as long as it takes to receive their sleep quality to where it ought to be. What surprises people most is the way foods they’re eating may be maintaining their brain wired, via irritation in their gut. The recent focus about the gut-brain axis has shed much light onto the brain’s sensitivity to whatever is happening in the intestine, and vice versa. It is a good time for personalized medical care that is root-cause. Improving the health of the body as a whole can have wholesome benefits on wellness.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Do you believe that taking pills doesn’t solve the underlying issue, and do you want to work with a practitioner who believes in the same manner? Fortunately, an increasing number of clinicians are practicing functional medicine.
What is functional medicine?
Functional medicine is an evidence-based clinical strategy that addresses the environmental effects and ailments that underlie disorder, with the concept that when those are treated, the body can return to its normal state of health and equilibrium. The content delves into the guiding principles and approach of FM, to help you determine whether dealing with a functional medicine practitioner is what you want on your journey toward healing and maintaining health.
Principles of Functional Medicine
The Textbook of Functional Medicine defines FM because the “prevention, early assessment, and enhanced management of complex, chronic disorder by intervening at multiple levels to fix heart health imbalances and thus restore each patient’s functionality and health to the greatest extent possible.” FM is based on six core principles:
Recognizing the individuality and genetic uniqueness of every human being
Supporting a holistic, patient-centered–rather than disease-centered–approach to treatment
Trying to Find a dynamic equilibrium between body, mind, and soul
Acknowledging the interconnectedness of all inner body functions
Seeing health as a positive vitality–not just the absence of disease
Striving to Improve the health span, not just the life span, of every patient
Strategy: The Functional Medicine Tree
A FM practitioner behaves as a detective, exploring the clinical imbalances that provide rise to a symptoms, then delving into the root causes–environmental factors and genetic trends that affect your well-being. This model can be compared to a tree, imbalances are represented by the back, where the symptoms are represented by the leaves, and the roots will be the dispositions.
The Leaves: Symptoms
Your symptoms are equal into the leaves of a shrub: highly visible and a significant indication of your underlying health. FM professionals use symptoms as guides to better comprehend the underlying ailments, rather than focusing on treating symptoms directly (which can be vital, but not the ultimate goal).
The Trunk: Clinical Imbalances
Like a tree trunk branching into leaves, systemic ailments develop into symptoms. FM practitioners thoroughly explore possible imbalances to gain a view. In FM, imbalances are categorized within the following systems and processes:
The nervous and hormonal system
The process of altering food, atmosphere, and water to energy
The procedure for detoxifying and removing waste
The immune system and inflammatory response
Digestive system
Structures – from the cellular to musculoskeletal level
A condition as simple as chronic headaches can point to an imbalance in one or many of these types, and it is the responsibility of an FM practitioner to determine what procedure or process is not optimally functioning.
The Roots: The Environment and Genetic Disposition
Environmental inputs and your genetic disposition are similar to the origins of a tree: they give rise to clinical imbalances, which then become symptoms.
Environment. Lifestyle options and toxic exposures can influence your health. The effects may not appear straight away, because your body is more resilient, but might collect with time and finally cause a condition. To determine medical imbalances’ root, an FM practitioner may ask questions like:
Have you been getting the right nutrients and exercise?
Are you exposed to toxic substances or radiation?
Would you possibly have parasites (it is more common than you think!) ?
Do you have allergies?
Have you undergone injury?
Do you have a healthy support network?
Genetic Disposition. Environmental variables are filtered through your genetic (physical, mental, and psychological) tendencies. Your perspectives, beliefs, and also the special way your body and brain process inputs can affect your susceptibility to certain conditions that are developing. Changing your perception of a circumstance, processing a traumatic memory, or learning how to better handle stress can go a long way on your recovery.
The functional medicine approach involves investigating every aspect that may be influencing your wellness and enabling you to have an active part in your healing. Rather than giving you drugs so that you can fully heal from the ground up, the objective is to dig into the root of the problem.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis, obesity, and even allergies have increased to be several of the top ten causes of death as of 2010. Heart disease and cancer accounted for 48 percent of all deaths. Modern medicine may handle illness effective, but it has failed to stem the tide of chronic illness.
How does modern medicine handle chronic illness?
In addition, studies imply that two-thirds of patients feel disrespected by their doctors, where 44 percent believe doctors do not spend sufficient time with them and a quarter believe doctors don’t answer questions and don’t adequately involve them in treatment choices, and use medical terms with no proper explanation.
Numerous health programs have gained prominence in the West as options to what’s called mainstream or biomedicine. Naturopathy, Massage Therapy, Ayurveda, Chiropractic, Chinese medicine, Acupuncture, Homeopathy and Reiki have arisen as alternative healing methods. The latest National Health Interview Survey estimates are currently spending $34 billion annually and that up to 40 percent of Americans have tried one or more of these alternatives.
Saved From Within with Functional Medicine
Change is also happening within the health care profession itself. Functional Medicine (FM) is a relatively new approach that’s grown from within mainstream medicine and challenges its reductionism and method of care. FM is not an alternate. Rather, it is a reform movement that is calling for a paradigm shift toward a holistic model of illness prevention and treatment based on the scientific area of systems biology. Systems biology holds that the sum is greater than its parts. Living organisms are complex, interactive and whole systems and not a conglomeration of parts. Systems biology gives an accurate and elegant understanding of who we are and how chronic disease needs to be treated and prevented. This position is embraced by functional medicine and its practitioners.
What is Functional Medicine?
The notion of functional medicine was made in 1990 by Dr. Jeffrey Bland, called the father of FM, to meet the growing challenge of chronic ailments with advances in modern medical science and systems biology. In 1991, he and his wife Susan created the Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM) to implement FM within the healthcare sector of society.
Functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease, not only its symptoms as mainstream medicine is more likely to do. FM is an application of systems biology that sees every person as an integration of mind, body and environment if you will. It treats the whole person and attempts to establish endurance and a dynamic balance within each individual. In this manner, it is holistic. A main goal of functional medicine is to promote each patient’s health and energy. An FM practitioner is a doctor with special training and looks at each patient’s:
Personal lifestyle
Unique biochemistry
Genetic predispositions
Environmental factors and toxicities
From the FM version, a disease may have multiple causes that include: indoor and sedentary lifestyle, chronic anxiety, genetics, poverty and lack of medical insurance, aging, significant families and community dysfunction, environmental toxicities, and nutrient deficiencies.
Regina Druz, MD, a practicing integrative cardiologist and FM practitioner in Mineola, NY, clarifies FM in quite pragmatic terms: “FM is root cause medication. It relates disease symptoms and ailments to biochemical and genetic processes that govern states of health and disease.”
Public Health Concerns
Since disease prevention is a top priority for FM, attempts are made to associate with individuals and communities to advocate for social change. As Dr. Druz explains: “Public health plays a very prominent part in the Functional Medicine domain as it concentrates on prevention and early intervention of chronic ailments.”
The systems strategy highlights the social origins of disorder and needs moving beyond a purely in-the-clinic version and advocates for changes in such things as food coverage (GMOs, industrial food production, etc.), poverty, and ecological degradation while supporting stable families. To be an effective medication for the 21st century “Prospective clinicians, if they are to be integrative healers, need to be outside where the folks are and to take part in environmental and social policy change.”
Functional Medicine Treatment Outline
Forging bonds with individual patients entails functional medicine practitioners spend much more time with patients than traditional doctors. It is typical to bring a patient history whilst in determining treatment choices involving the individual. The GOTOIT strategy is essential to accomplishing this. Jones and Quinn identify the GOTOIT procedure as a logical way of “eliciting the patent’s entire story and ensuring that treatment and assessment are in accord with this story.”
G = Gather Information
O = Organize Information
T = Tell the Complete Story Back to the Patient
O = Order and Prioritize
I = Initiate Treatment
T = Track Outcomes
The FM practitioner enters all of this information to a Functional Medication Matrix which allows for all pertinent information to be followed and changed as need be more than one time. This process necessitates interaction between patient and physician and can be extremely crucial when determining the proper treatment plan.
The Future of Functional Medicine
Many in the field of FM believe it’s the future of medicine. Regina Druz states, “Functional medicine is the way of the future. My prediction is that we’ll come to complete force within the next 5-10 decades.” She adds that FM will make it possible for the “prevention of chronic illness and cancer to begin in-utero and continue throughout one’s lifetime.” Druz considers that this is possible as epigenetics, genomics, toxicology and biochemistry contemplate new interventions and expand our abilities to comprehend the way the body/mind functions.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Most of us have heard the adage connected with physicians’ medical advice: “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” Imagine a scenario in which, instead of offering a fast cure, the doctor sat down with you and inquired about the elements of your lifestyle. That’s what physicians who exercise functional medicine do. They are also medical doctors. What they have in common is that they take a holistic approach to your well-being.
What is Patient-Centered Healthcare?
The term “patient-centered healthcare” is becoming popular in the last decade. You might ask yourself, shouldn’t healthcare always center on the individual? This concept, which is an integral value in functional medicine, means physicians focus on the entire person rather than on a disease or disease. Rather than finding the way to eradicate symptoms, the functional medicine doctor searches for the origin of the individual’s problem. These doctors recognize each patient’s identity rather than taking a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Mind, Body and Spirit in Functional Medicine
Functional medicine physicians probe deeper than just finding out what is going on physically with their own patients. They can ask you about your spiritual and emotional health, and want to learn about your relationships with loved ones and partners. They aim to make the most of your overall health and wellness.
Cost Effective Disease Prevention
Preventing a disorder is significantly more cost effective than treating one. By minimizing damage done by poor nutrition, stress and exposure to environmental toxins and preserving your well-being, functional medicine doctors can save you money altogether. In all this, where does chiropractic fit in?
Chiropractic care is one aspect of comprehensive functional medicine, since it helps patients achieve optimum health. Furthermore, concepts of medication fit into chiropractors’ clinics, since they optimize their tools to treat patients.
Some chiropractors chiefly focus on conventional spinal adjustments and manipulations. However, others have included these elements to the chiropractic practice that they offer, in accordance with the fundamentals of medicine. These may include counseling and lifestyle interventions. This integrated approach is especially popular with complex but common disorders, such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.
Functional medicine chiropractors work together with other practitioners to maximize patients’ health. For instance, a chiropractor may refer a patient to an acupuncturist for additional help. The acupuncturist may send the chiropractor their patients. They work with each other, focusing on the patient’s best interests.
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Things to Expect From a Functional Medicine Chiropractor
Patients are often surprised by how long a practical medicine chiropractor spends with them. Expect a much longer visit than you’d get from your typical MD. The staff will probably ask you to complete questionnaires about your diet history, exposure to symptoms, past illnesses and toxins. Your functional medicine doctor might order lab tests too.
The individual has an active role in functional medicine. You may work with your physician to boost your health, frequently by altering your diet and lifestyle, rather than passively taking medications to relieve existing symptoms.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Functional medicine is a personalized, systems-oriented model that enables patients and practitioners to reach the highest expression of well-being by working together to address the underlying causes of disease.
However, how does functional medicine address underlying disease?
Functional medicine addresses these underlying causes of disease using a systems-oriented strategy that engages both patient and practitioner in a healing partnership.
As a matter of fact, it is a development in the practice of medicine that addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. Functional medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated group of symptoms by shifting medical practice’s traditional focus to some more patient-centered approach.
Functional medicine practitioners spend time adhering to their histories and taking a look at the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can affect chronic disease and well-being. Functional medicine supports health and vitality’s special expression for each person.
What is the Significance of Functional Medicine?
Our society is currently undergoing a sharp increase in the amount of people who suffer from complex, chronic diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, mental disease, and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis.
The system of medicine practiced by the majority of doctors is oriented toward acute care, the diagnosis and treatment for injury or illness that’s of short duration and needing urgent care, like a broken leg or a heart attack. Physicians apply specific remedies such as surgery or drugs that aim to treat the symptom or the problem. Unfortunately, the approach to medicine is ill equipped to deal with complex disease.
Typically, the model does not take into consideration the distinctive genetic makeup of every individual and doesn’t allow time for exploring the aspects of the lifestyle that have an immediate influence on the development in chronic illness in modern Western society; crucial environmental factors such as stress, diet, and exposure to toxins. Because of this, most doctors are not adequately trained to estimate the causes of complex, chronic illness, nor to employ strategies like nutrition, diet, and exercise to cure and prevent these disorders. The old addage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” really sums up a much better approach.
Functional Medicine IS that distinct approach, with methodology and tools that are specifically designed to treat and prevent chronic ailments. It incorporates the latest in genetic science, systems biology, and understanding of lifestyle and environmental factors influence the emergence and development of disease. It empowers patients to take an active part in their health and enables doctors and other caregivers to practice proactive, predictive medication.
How Functional Medicine Can Treat Chronic Disease
Since the prevalence of chronic conditions continues to grow, the percentage of Americans with mental health conditions has now followed. Anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions often occur in tandem with physical ones. In fact, compared to patients with no mental health diagnosis, patients with mental illness may be more likely to visit the clinician’s office complaining about minor illnesses. Furthermore, patients with mental illness that visit the Emergency Room are not as likely to receive adequate screening or therapy for diabetes, blood pressure, cancer, and other conditions.
Nutritional and fitness changes associated with functional medicine treatment can simultaneously address both bodily concerns and psychological health difficulties. For instance, nourishment is known to affect melancholy; both its severity and duration can be modified by dietary influences. A connection between GI microbiota, that in turn are heavily influenced by diet, and mental health was demonstrated for stress, metabolic syndrome, and mood disorders, and stress management, amongst others.
Additionally, studies have linked poor nutrition to greater incidence of mental illness in adolescents and preschoolers, while a better diet was correlated with greater mental health in children and teens. In that vein, psychiatrists are also increasingly recognizing the primacy of nutrition, as well as fitness and sleep, in treating mental illness.
Giving patients effective tools to adopt new dietary habits and improve their nutrition, along with a well planned fitness program, can improve outcomes for both physical and mental disorders. Lifestyle changes can seem challenging to many patients, especially those with mental health difficulties, however functional medicine practitioners can help you implement strategies that are practical with these patients that will lead to results and compliance.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .�
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Research suggests that illness recovery and prevention improve when supported by proper nutrition and supplementation. Nevertheless, clinicians don’t often get extensive training in nutrition and nutrient supplements in osteopathic and medical school, a study of pediatric residency interns that were incoming showed.
What’s the importance of nutrition towards health and wellness?
Unsurprisingly, many patients are malnourished, are experiencing record levels of disease, and therefore are likely being treated without learning about other, less invasive but exceptionally effective treatment options.
The Power of Nutrition
When high-quality nutrition is used consistently and efficiently, it may prevent potential chronic disease, enhance cognition in people with dementia, and improve outcomes in patients getting GI and colorectal oncological surgeries, to mention a few. In addition, nutrition support is associated with length of stays and infectious complications.
Integrative and functional medicine practitioners, specialists of any discipline certified in integrative and functional medicine, are educated healthcare providers, qualified and experienced on how best to use functional nutrition to effectively prevent and even reverse chronic illness, such as fibromyalgia, as well as to support general health and wellness. Functional nutrition aims at addressing the imbalances in the body by restoring proper function through food, lifestyle and supplement interventions, restoring a patients’ health and improving the patients’ outcomes.
To get started learning about functional nutrition, many healthcare professionals learn the basics of the way functional nutrition helps their patients through an extended series of specialized courses and training. Some integrative and functional medicine resources may contains over 10 food programs which could be personalized depending on the individual condition and the patient, to provide a personalized treatment experience.
When Standard Diets Don’t Work
Despite recent improvements in nutrigenomics, the thought that a given food is going to have precisely the same impact for all individuals is still widespread. A recent study found that after ingesting identical foods, blood sugar levels could vary by up to 20 percent in the exact same person and up to 25 percent across individuals.
Likewise, another study demonstrated that individuals may have radically different sugar responses to the exact same meal. Using continuous glucose monitoring and meals that were standardized, the investigators found that identical meals led to physiologic outcomes. As a result, any strategy that grades dietary components either “good” or “poor” based on their typical postprandial glycemic responses (PPGRs) will be of small use to the respective patient.
In contrast, the exciting and relatively new field of metabolomics is now being applied in nutrigenomics research. Because the molecules which vary between meals are identified by metabolomics, researchers guess it could be utilized to determine biomarkers of disease risk and also to track effects of foods for more efficient treatment.
In an era in which more personalized data is accessible than ever before, healthcare professionals can attain incredible outcomes by using this emerging study to evaluate and treat patients according to their individual needs. But how do you develop a framework for customizing therapy programs that takes into consideration all data that is applicable?
The Institute for Functional Medicine’s foundational five-day course, Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice (AFMCP), for example, joins practitioners to personalized tests and clinical instruments which can be tailored to each individual’s particular physiology, including genetics, lifestyle, and readiness to change. A variety of specialized integrative and functional medicine training programs provides healthcare professionals the tools to prescribe effective treatment programs customized to individual patients’ needs across the spectrum.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: Wellness
Overall health and wellness are essential towards maintaining the proper mental and physical balance in the body. From eating a balanced nutrition as well as exercising and participating in physical activities, to sleeping a healthy amount of time on a regular basis, following the best health and wellness tips can ultimately help maintain overall well-being. Eating plenty of fruits and vegetables can go a long way towards helping people become healthy.
Patients visit their clinicians for all kinds of reasons�from the absurd to the mundane�but the chief complaint tends to be one of only a handful of non-acute conditions. In a study of more than 140,000 Minnesotan patients, researchers found the most common clinical complaints included:
Skin disorders
Osteoarthritis and joint disorders
Cholesterol problems
Upper respiratory conditions, excluding asthma
High blood pressure
Headaches and migraines1
Surprisingly, the researchers discovered the most prevalent complaints affected all sexes and age groups and were not conditions related to aging, such as diabetes and heart disease.1
Knowing how to effectively and efficiently address these common complaints can significantly improve patient compliance and patient outcomes. For instance, in the following video clip, Robert Rountree, MD, offers a clinical strategy for migraines, which are the third highest cause of disability worldwide.2-4 Dr. Rountree explains how to use lifestyle and nutrition to relieve migraine symptoms and address their underlying causes.
Robert Rountree, MD, explores how lifestyle and nutrition can support migraine treatment.
At IFM�s Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice (AFMCP), our educators will teach you strategies to find the underlying causes of migraines, as well as many other common complaints you tend to see in your practice. Using a case-based, collaborative format, you will learn about Functional Medicine strategies to treat various hormonal, gastrointestinal, and cardiometabolic conditions. AFMCP provides the tools you need to build upon your current clinical skills and improve your outcomes with all types of non-acute conditions.
St. Sauver JL, Warner DO, Yawn BP, et al. Why patients visit their doctors: assessing the most prevalent conditions in a defined American population.�Mayo Clin Proc. 2013;88(1):56-67. doi: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2012.08.020.
Lipton RB, Bigal ME. Ten lessons on the epidemiology of migraine. Headache. 2007;47(Suppl 1):S2-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1526-4610.2007.00671.x.
Rasmussen BK, Jensen R, Schroll M, Olesen J. Epidemiology of headache in a general population�a prevalence study. J Clin Epidemiol. 1991;44(11):1147-57.
Steiner TJ, Birbeck GL, Jensen RH, Katsarava Z, Stovner LJ, Martelletti P. Headache disorders are third cause of disability worldwide. J Headache Pain. 2015;16:58. doi: 10.1186/s10194-015-0544-2.
IFM's Find A Practitioner tool is the largest referral network in Functional Medicine, created to help patients locate Functional Medicine practitioners anywhere in the world. IFM Certified Practitioners are listed first in the search results, given their extensive education in Functional Medicine
