Why a Functional Medicine Appointment Looks Beyond Your Symptoms 

Millions of people suffer from chronic symptoms and take medications that treat the symptoms, not the cause. Fatigue, brain fog, digestive problems, and hormonal imbalances are symptoms that are commonly blamed on another cause when, in actuality, they are a common cluster of symptoms. The difference in a functional medicine appointment is that instead of continuing treatment for symptoms indefinitely, it asks, “Why are the symptoms occurring?” This thinking change is what’s driving increased requests from patients for practitioners who consider the bigger picture of a patient’s health rather than just symptoms.

Medications for symptoms only.

Orthodox medicine treats the body as if it were divided into specializations: the head and neck are treated by a neurologist, the thyroid by an endocrinologist, and digestion by a gastroenterologist. This is a connected system, however. Brain function can be impaired by a hormonal imbalance. Fatigue and digestive problems are both signs of chronic inflammation. If every symptom is dealt with individually, the root cause is left untreated, and the same symptoms continue to recur in new ways.

Root-Cause Medicine in Action

Root cause care incorporates clinical science with lifestyle factors—nutrition, stress management, sleep, and detoxification—to determine what is truly causing a patient’s health problems. A practitioner doesn’t just tell a patient to take a pill and forget about it; instead, he or she digs down to the cause of symptoms, ranging from a nutrient deficiency to the presence of an environmental toxin in the body, to issues with the gut or chronic stress response. The objective is not to have a “one-size-fits-all” protocol but rather a personalized plan.

Situations where this approach would be beneficial

The model can be used for many health issues, such as

• Neurological disorders, including migraine, epilepsy, and neuropathy.
• Pediatric neurology, including concerns with autism spectrum and seizure disorders
• Neurological disorders such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, etc.
• General functional medicine needs, such as diabetes, thyroid, cardiovascular, and gut disorders
• Mould-related illness and exposure to high levels of metals in the environment

Those who suffer with any of these frequently encounter the situation where traditional therapy only treats part of the problem. Functional medicine broadens the scope of view.

The significance of experience in this profession

Root cause diagnosis is not just a matter of guesswork—it is a skill that can only be learned through clinical training and the ability to sift through the results of laboratory tests, symptom patterns, and lifestyle histories to draw conclusions. With more than 20 years in functional neurology and functional medicine, Clermont Functional Medicine with Dr. Rajpaul Singh, MD, provides patients of all ages with over 20 years of experience in functional neurology and functional medicine in Clermont, Florida. He has a particular interest and specialization in discovering the root cause of his patients’ condition as opposed to symptom management.

Guide to this type of care.

Root-cause visits usually entail much more history than a typical visit—including a detailed health history, lifestyle factors, and sometimes more than just routine lab work. Treatment plans are then created on a case-by-case basis, rather than based on a diagnosis code. This may take longer initially, but it is aimed at eradicating the vicious cycle of ongoing symptoms that cannot be fixed with traditional treatment.

Conclusion 

When patients have chronic symptoms that fail to respond to usual therapies, it is often a clue that something deeper is going on. If you have been suffering from symptoms without a real cause, you might want to consider the underlying cause rather than the symptom. Getting started with a functional medicine appointment is a very practical way of trying to understand what is going on in the body—and how to work directly with the system, instead of just trying to manage what is apparent on the surface.