COVER STORY CLINICAL Beyond symptoms O Origins Incorporating principles of functional medicine into practice by mike straus Atrium Innovations and the former president of Douglas Laboratories. “Functional medicine’s principles have always been present in the foundation of chiropractic medicine,” she says. “The philosophy [of chiroprac-tic] says that the body has an innate wisdom. We’re at a great time in chiropractic medicine. We under-stand nutrition. We understand things that happen at a cellular level when we do an adjustment. Treating the person as a whole is the chiropractic way.” Dr. Leah Stadelmann, functional medicine prac-titioner and owner of Chief Chiropractic in Squa-mish, B.C., notes that functional medicine origi-nated as a proactive treatment method that pinpoints causes, not symptoms. “When I think of functional medicine, I think of medicine that looks at patients from the perspective of how fundamental physiological processes and different environments affect patients. It’s hard to look at chiropractic and functional medicine and dissociate one from the other.” Although functional medicine is rooted in treat-ments and theories that pre-date modern medicine, it wasn’t until biochemist Dr. Jeffrey Bland estab-lished the Institute for Functional Medicine in 1991 that the theoretical framework of functional med-icine was formally organized into a system of principles and practices. Over the last 25 years, the Institute for Functional Medicine has expanded from a pure research capacity into developing clinical applications for practitioners. ver the past several years, health disciplines of all kinds have been undergoing a revolution. Physi-cians and practitioners of all stripes are now calling for more integrated and holistic, sys-tems-based approaches that ad-dress underlying root causes rather than symptoms. While this call for an interdisciplinary approach is now widely popular among health-care profession-als, the appreciation of the interdisciplinary move-ment started with the introduction of functional medicine as a formal medical theory. Chiropractic and functional medicine have a shared history, one that allows for easy collabora-tion and cross-pollination of research. It should come as no surprise, then, that the principles and findings of functional medicine are easy to employ in chiropractic treatment settings. Functional med-icine can provide chiropractic patients with a number of health benefits, and with the infrastruc-ture already in place, the chiropractic setting is fertile ground for the implementation of functional medicine practices. Functional medicine offers a variety of benefits in chiropractic treatment, ranging from a mere change of mindset to more effective treatments and better health outcomes. MIKE STRAUS is a freelance writer living in Kelowna, British Columbia. You can reach him at [email protected] 20 Canadian Chiropractor June 2016 Science-based The great strength of functional medicine is that its emphasis on causes allows for more www.canadianchiropractor.ca Photo: Fotolia Functional medicine may sound like a new treat-ment, but its practitioners say it’s rooted in health-care practices and principles that are thousands of years old. Dr. Victoria Coleman is a chiropractor in Lon-don, Ont., who is certified in functional medicine. She is the vice-president of clinical education for
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