Functional medicine in Denver is a growing phenomenon as it is in the rest of the country. The school of thought is millennia old, but the formalized concept began in the early 90s with the Institute for Functional Medicine.
Functional medicine is a patient-centered approach to treatment. You’re probably thinking, isn’t all medicine patient-centered? Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. Mainstream medicine practitioners are influenced by many external factors when developing your treatment.
The Longevity Lab Aesthetics and Wellness Clinic is different. We listen and stay by your side until all of your health goals are met. Our clinic is centered around global body transformation from the inside-out.
The Problem With Mainstream Medicine
Functional medicine arose from widespread dissatisfaction with mainstream medicine. The main issue with mainstream medicine is that it reactively treats symptoms rather than proactively treating root-causes.
Generally speaking, mainstream medicine trains physicians to address one issue at a time. They are not taught to consider the entire body-system. On top of this, they don’t take a person’s history into account.
Aside from directly relevant medical history, a traditional physician will not evaluate the whole person. For instance, your childhood, your community, your traumas, nor your identity play a part in mainstream medicine.
Many of the problems in mainstream medicine stem from financial and time constraints. Traditional physicians will sometimes see 40 patients in a day. They don’t have the time or resources to properly get to know the people that rely on them
Additionally, big pharmaceutical companies have largely impacted our healthcare system. The financial gain from treating chronic illnesses is quite influential. As a result, it is common practice to only meet with a patient for minutes before prescribing medication and sending them out the door.
These physicians are not entirely to blame. Our healthcare system is massive and hard to change. That is why The Longevity Lab decided to step outside of it all together and practice functional medicine in Denver.
Understanding Functional Medicine
Functional medicine is based on the evolving research in nutritional science, genomics, and epigenetics. An increased understanding of these fields has led many medical professionals to conclude we’ve been ignoring a huge element of health.
The importance of a healthy diet is well known, but the meaning behind “healthy” is still up in the air. Mainstream medicine promotes one standard diet for everyone. Functional medicine looks at individuals and seeks to find what exactly they need.
Advances in genomics have taught us that the genes we inherit are secondary to the environment our genes are in. According to the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), “Diet and lifestyle choices and environmental exposures can render disease more or less likely by turning on—or off—certain genes.”
This discovery has shaped functional medicine to address the external factors that influence disease. If physicians and patients take responsibility for their ability to affect gene expression, the number of chronic diseases will decrease.
The all-encompassing method of evaluation used by functional medicine is considered a systems biology-based approach. Mainstream medicine may ask “what is the problem” and “how do we fix it,” and it tends to stop there.
Functional medicine goes further. It asks “why is this problem happening” and “where in the body is this problem rooted.” This approach enables treatment to create lifelong change whereas mainstream solutions can be more short-term.
Why Functional Medicine Is The Solution
Functional medicine can bridge the gaps left by mainstream medicine. Where traditional methods fail, functional methods have solutions. It is born out of the mistakes made by mainstream medicine.
At the heart of functional medicine, is the principle of treating root-causes first and foremost. There are several fundamental models which inform physicians on how to carry this out.
They are the Functional Medicine Matrix, Functional Medicine Timeline, and GOTOIT Framework. The concepts from these models help us to practice functional medicine in Denver.
The Root-Cause Treatment Model
The root-cause treatment model teaches physicians to not leave any stone unturned. Rather than defaulting to the most common cause or the most straightforward one, the root-cause model requires an in-depth investigation into the individual.
Some medical conditions have many causes and some causes result in many conditions. For example, depression can be caused by anything from a vitamin deficiency to life events to inflammation.
At the same time a medical cause like inflammation can result in anything from depression to cancer to heart disease. Transformative treatment must start with these interconnecting webs of causes and conditions in the body.
The Functional Medicine Matrix, Timeline, & GOTOIT Framework
As more people became interested in functional medicine, the Institute for Functional Medicine found it necessary to develop these models to help spread their ideology. These tools formalize history-taking and symptom mapping to better understand the underlying causes of illness.
The Functional Medicine Matrix helps the medical professional organize a patient’s health concerns. It covers personal and medical history to create a complete story from seemingly separate issues.
The Functional Medicine Timeline also organizes a patient’s personal and medical history, but it prioritizes time-based relationships. Showing a patient their history chronologically often helps them take accountability for their lifestyle and patterns. This motivates them to make changes and participate in treatment more fully.
The GOTOIT Framework stands for Gather, Organize, Tell, Order, Initiate, and Track. This framework is a tool that standardizes the process of discovering the root-cause and administering treatment.
The Longevity Lab Approach
You may have guessed that we prioritize longevity. Longevity is usually talking about living a long life, but we have our own definition for it. We believe longevity should be a life that is not just long, but full of happiness, fulfillment, and health.
Having longevity is all about feeling good in your skin so you can make the most out of your life. Working with you using functional medicine in Denver to achieve longevity is our passion.
The common thread through all of our treatments is the goal of global body transformation starting with the smallest building blocks of the human body– the cell. We determine what your body needs on the inside to function its best, and we treat it using cutting-edge technology.
For example, urinary incontinence is often treated with oral medication alone which you’ll have to take indefinitely. Alternatively, our functional medicine approach would treat the root cause of incontinence.
We would use Emsella, a non-invasive, pain-free procedure, to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles that are too weak to control your bladder.
Another example is related to low energy, a very common complaint among adults. Mainstream medicine would likely prescribe a better sleep schedule and over-the-counter vitamin pills. The Longevity Lab would treat you with vitamin injections and NAD+ IV therapy.
Most vitamins are not absorbed well in the gut and leave your system without depositing any nutrients. Injections are much more effective because they release the vitamins directly into your bloodstream. We know this because we can do lab work and check your vitamin levels after both types of treatment.
A great example comes from medical weight loss drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide. These drugs are misunderstood by many patients and physicians alike. Functional medicine calls us to look deeper at the impact of these medications on the metabolic system.
How Medical Weight Loss Can Be Functional Medicine
Drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide have become increasingly popular in recent years. They are most often seen as weight loss medications, but they are much more than that.
Semaglutide is the most in demand out of these medications. It was originally developed as type 2 diabetes treatment because it works by prompting insulin production.
When you have type 2 diabetes, your pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin, and your cells are bad at receiving insulin which is known as insulin resistance. Insulin is what allows sugar into your cells to fuel your body and give you energy.
Many people without type 2 diabetes also have insulin resistance which causes weight gain, low energy, and other health complications. Semagultide can reset your metabolism by solving insulin resistance.
Metabolic health is a pillar of The Longevity Lab. We believe optimizing your metabolism is the key to many day-to-day issues in your life. By treating insulin resistance with a drug like semaglutide, we can promote wellness in every aspect of your life.
The reason so many physicians have been unable to tap into this is because an exceptional understanding of nutrition is needed to make it work. Individualized nutrition based on discrete measures is how we induce a reset on the cellular level.
Through a nutrition plan, we can foster metabolic flexibility. This involves retraining your cells to perform their best with both fat and carbohydrates for fuel. If your body can efficiently alternate between these fuel sources, you can achieve sustained metabolic health.
This is a high-level overview of The Longevity Lab approach. When you come in, we can answer any questions you still have about functional medicine in Denver. We can also discuss what your personalized treatment plan might look like.
Join the Functional Medicine Movement At The Longevity Lab
You can belong to a community that supports functional medicine with actions and not just words. Request an appointment at The Longevity Lab to learn more about functional medicine and how you can benefit from it.
