Integrative medicine is taking the medical sector by storm with their new approaches and more effective healing procedures. Integrative medicine is a combination of many different medical practices all working together, taking into consideration the entirety of a person. Integrative medicine uses the body’s innate healing powers to regenerate body tissues and produce unheard of results when compared to traditional medicine.

What is Integrative Medicine?

Integrative medicine is the integration of all types of medicine, to take into consideration the entire health of the mind, body, and soul. Integrative medicine is an amalgamation of all branches of medicine, working together to heal the body.

Integrative medicine is the medical field of utilizing the body’s own healing mechanisms, to promote healing and longevity. Integrative medicine is used to replace the need of expensive and deteriorating medications, and the many side-effects that come with those medications. It is also used in place of unnecessary surgeries, so you can heal properly without invasive procedures.

These two practices work incredibly well together and are changing the way doctors look at medicine as a whole. It is not used as a topical solution to cover up pain, but to get to the root of the problem so that pain is no longer an issue. Traditional medicine seeks to alleviate symptoms with the use of medications, yet these often only distract from the problem. integrative medicine seeks to physically heal an individual, so there is no need for destructive medications and pernicious surgeries.

What is the difference between functional medicine and integrative medicine?

When it comes to your health, you want to make sure that you’re approaching it at the right angle to ensure that all of your needs are met. As medical technology and knowledge gathering have improved over the years, different forms of medicine that cater to patients’ specific needs and wants have been developed. One of the more popular approaches to improving health involves functional medicine, which focuses on underlying causes of illnesses that are influenced by genetic predispositions and the environment in which one lives. Functional medicine typically utilizes individualized therapies to identify what exactly is causing your problem and implements special testing to assess whether imbalances developed prior to the disease or were the result of treating a chronic illness. The functional medicine approach centers around the idea that one condition can have many causes or conversely, that one cause can have many conditions. For example, you could be suffering from one condition, like depression, that is caused by Vitamin D deficiency, low thyroid and antibiotic use, or you could be experiencing depression, heart disease, arthritis and diabetes that all stem from inflammation.

On the same hand as functional medicine, integrative medicine functions in a similar, albeit different, way as it seeks to evaluate the patient as a whole and not just as a disease. Integrative medicine views the patient as a combination of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs that are interdependent on each other and affect the entire well-being of the person. Since there are so many different parts to address, integrative medicine physicians often use a combination of multiple therapies such as acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic care, behavioral therapy, homeopathy and energy work to provide thorough treatment in all areas.