Functional Medicine looks at your health from the perspective of interconnectedness. All your organ systems are related to each other, much like a network of networks. For example, what happens in your gut impacts your brain and mood. In regular medicine, we are used to separating the body into different organ systems. Each organ system has its own specialist. For example, a Gynaecologist is a specialist in the diseases of the reproductive organs of women, a Neurologist specializes in diseases of the nervous system and so on. Often one specialist does not know enough about the other specialties.
In Functional Medicine, we look at different areas through the lens of common pathways. For example, insulin resistance (you will learn about it later) is the underlying problem in type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia, mood disorders, PCOS, and the commonest heart diseases. And your food has the highest impact on these diseases. Therefore, we start with healing the gut first.
In this video, Dr. Kar talks about the network-of-network approach in Functional Medicine. Silos versus networks. She talks about the “constellation” of factors that affect your health.