Functional medicine is a form of alternative medicine (sometimes called integrative medicine) that includes a large number of unproven and disproven methods and treatments of different diseases, illnesses and disabilities. They claim that they focus on the “root causes” of different conditions based on interactions between the environment and the gastrointestinal, endocrine, and immune systems to create “individual treatment plans.” The treatments that functional medicine doctors recommend are normally not supported by medical evidence.  It is described as quackery, pseudoscience and alternative medicine.

In the United States, functional medicine practices have been ruled ineligible for course credits by the American Academy of Family Physicians because they are concerned that functional medicine is harmful

History of Functional Medicine

How Functional Medicine Describes Itself.

In 2014, Cleveland Clinic was the first academic medical center in the United States to establish a functional medicine program. They partnered with Mark Hyman, the inventor of functional medicine and the board president of Clinical Affairs at the Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM) to start this department.

The Cleveland Clinic Functional Medicine describes the functional model of care as “patient centered approach to chronic disease management. It seeks answers to the question ‘why are you ill?’ so you can receive personalized, effective care for your needs.”

“Functional medicine providers spend time listening to you and gathering your medical history. We use this information to identify the root causes of the illness, including triggers such as poor nutrition, stress, toxins, allergens, genetics and your microbiome.”

The average person would not pick up on the red flags in that statement. Functional medicine claims that illness is triggered by microbiome (gut), toxins (vaccines), allergens, poor nutrition (nonrestricted eating), etc. They would recommend restrictive diets and being anti-vaccine. The quack community is obsessed over the gut for some reason.

They utilize unnecessary, expensive tests performed in the named of “holistic” healthcare. This is because they claim this is how they will find the underlying causes of what ails their victims.

Functional medicine also heavily stresses lifestyle changes to fix health problems. They claim that diet, exercise, sleep patterns, stress levels and other aspects of life will heal disease.

By saying they are patient focused, they attract people who want to be taken seriously. This leads to a dangerous patient/provider relationship. The patient expects to be prescribed treatments that are proven but instead they get quackery.

Conditions that functional medicine treats

The autistic community now knows that the Cleveland Clinic practices quackery and that they should stay away.

What Functional Medicine Says About Autism

How Functional Medicine Attempts to Treat Autism

Sources:

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/functional-medicine/about

Integrative Medicine vs. Functional Medicine: Is There a Difference?

Jeffrey Bland, PhD

Some Notes on Jeffrey Bland and Metagenics