What Is Functional Medicine?

More and more stressed-out, burned-out mums are turning to functional medicine because allopathic medicine is failing them and their families. This is even more so, now, in the pandemic. High levels of stress are causing energy, mood, and gut issues. Yet more often than not, when you get GP tests done, all your results come back as ‘fine’. Even long-haul COVID and chronic side-effects from jabs have no allopathic treatments. There’s simply no drug to give. 

Now more than ever I am on a mission to end body burnout (for good!), even during - and because of! - the pandemic. 

The question I get asked a lot, however, is: what even is functional medicine? And how can it help me? Get ready to get your questions answered!

Functional Medicine is the opposite of DYSFUNCTIONAL medicine 

In Functional Medicine, we are not interested in band-aiding the symptom, condition, or disease with a drug or surgery or even a natural supplement or diet. Functional Medicine is about getting to the ROOT CAUSE of your health issues by treating imbalances in your body (physiological imbalances), as well as mindset, lifestyle, and environmental imbalances, which often CAUSE body burnout in the first place. Our signature functional medicine Ending Body Burnout method involves using natural, low-risk treatments, including therapeutic nutraceuticals, nutrition, lifestyle modifications, environmental changes, and inner mind and spiritual work.   

Functional Medicine is PERSONAL medicine

Every person is unique, and so in order to treat and heal your body properly, we need to take an individual and personal approach. No two treatment plans are ever the same.

PERSONAL medicine means we treat the PERSON not just the symptoms or the labs. It involves treating the WHOLE person, and getting to know you very personally - understanding your personality, your makeup, why, and how you ‘tick’. If your current practitioner is not doing this (i.e. they are just giving you some supps and some diet/lifestyle recommendations), they are not practicing functional medicine correctly. 

Functional Medicine is the medicine of CONNECTIVITY 

In conventional medicine, we have doctors specialising in the brain or the endocrine system, or the gut, or the reproductive system. This is all good and well, but it fails to see the way that all body systems are connected. In Functional Medicine, we look at the way the hormones or the brain interact with the gut, which then interacts with the liver. Trying to treat only one body system when there are multiple imbalances in other body systems (which there often are!), will never achieve optimal health.

Connectivity goes beyond just the body systems - it goes further to root causes that lead to body system burnout in the first place. Is it a feeling, which leads to a thought, which leads to a behaviour, which leads to a habit, which leads to a lifestyle, which then CAUSES the adrenals/brain/microbiome/detox pathways to burnout? We connect the dots, and treat the multifaceted and layered levels of root causes, to achieve symptomatic resolution for good.

Functional Medicine is the medicine of WHY 

It’s not good enough to label you with, say, ‘Chronic Fatigue’ or even ‘Adrenal Fatigue’. We want to know WHY you are so fatigued – is it due to a depletion of your stress hormones or your neurotransmitters? Or because you have candida overgrowth? Or because your detoxification pathways are all blocked up and your body is riddled with toxins? And then WHY are those systems imbalanced in the first place - what are the root causes? Until you can stop asking WHY it is then you have found the deepest root cause. Again, many natural practitioners fail to deeply ask WHY? This is why many people only get some relief from symptoms - or chronic health issues keep coming back.

Functional Medicine uses specialty LAB TESTING to detect functional imbalances

This makes it different to say Naturopathy or Nutritional Medicine which traditionally operates without any pathology testing. This originated from a need to bridge natural therapies with scientific assessment and research. Functional Medicine lab testing differs from conventional pathology testing as it detects functional imbalances NOT a disease. This is important as triggers for early disease-onset can be picked up and reversed by doing functional lab testing. It also picks up issues that regular doctor's tests don’t pick up. Have you ever been to your GP only for them to say that all your tests came back ‘fine’, when you don’t feel fine?! It’s highly likely that you have underlying functional issues that are causing you to feel the way that you feel.

What Next?

I’m so excited for 2022! So many working mums are concerned, stressed out, burned-out, worrying how they can get through another year of the pandemic with sick kids at home, economic disruption, viral infections, as well as trying to deal with their pre-existing energy, mood, and/or gut issues. It can feel a bit doom or gloom.

But the reason why I am so excited is because of the possibility of CHANGE. It’s possible to rethink and re-perceive the way you look at the pandemic. It’s possible to pivot your career or business to something that gives you purpose, better work-life balance, or more financial security. And most importantly you can change how your body functions, how you feel, and how you interact with your family. We have a system that works, and we are busting to share it with you!

If you’d like to dive deeper into our functional medicine lab testing and the ways we treat our clients, register for our free 10-part Hormonal & Gut Burnout mini-course HERE.

Filipa Bellette is Co-Founder of Chris & Filly Functional Medicine. She is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist & Functional Medicine Practitioner. She is also a Ph.D. thought-leader, award-winning writer, and regularly published as a guest blogger & in the media. Together with her husband Chris Bellette, Filipa has worked with over 2,000+ busy, burnout clients in the last 10+ years, and specialises in producing healthy, balanced, and happy Mums & Dads...or as she calls it, a Power Parent! Filipa’s own passion for producing high-performance Power Parents came from her own personal experience of Mummy Burnout, after having babies and juggling the demands of business, family, and her failing health.