Conventional (Allopathic) medicine is still the kind of medicine that most people encounter at doctors, hospitals and clinics. Often both expensive and invasive, it is very good at some things − for example, handling emergency conditions such as massive injury, fractures, heart attack or stroke.
Integrative Medicine combines mainstream medical therapies and alternative therapies for which there is some high quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness − in other words, integrative medicine picks the very best scientifically validated therapies for both conventional and alternative systems. This is particularly effective in chronic disease.
The primary intervention is at the underlying dysfunction ie the stage before disease sets in and takes many forms such as insulin resistance, nutrient deficiencies, hormone imbalances, stomach acid imbalances, immune system imbalances etc.
An integrative doctor will detect and diagnose the dysfunctions and correct these problems before they manifest as disease − through nutrition, diet, exercise, use of the latest laboratory testing and other diagnostic techniques, and prescribed combinations of drugs and/or botanical medicines, supplements, therapeutic diets, detoxification programs, or stress management techniques.
Functional medicine addresses the whole person,not just an isolated set of symptoms.
For example:
Autoimmune diseases affect millions of people and despite categorization into diagnoses such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Scleroderma, SLE, Thyroid Disease etc, the treatments are based on pathology, not etiology.
The cause of a disease may vary among people with the same diagnosis or the cause may be the same in patients with very different pathologies eg mercury toxicity may be found in both MS and Crohn′s Disease. Treating only the effects (such as nutrient deficiencies or food sensitivities due to malabsorption and intestinal hyperpermeability) without treating the causes (such as gluten sensitivity, GI yeast or mercury toxicity) will often result in treatment failure.