Root-Cause Medicine: How Functional Care Goes Beyond Treating Symptoms

If you’ve ever experienced something like persistent headaches or muscle aches, you know how valuable pain-relief medicine is. While medication can temporarily relieve symptoms, addressing the underlying cause is key to long-term relief. This approach to health care is known as root-cause medicine — helping you find the relief you didn’t know was possible.

Keep reading to learn more about root-cause medicine, also known as functional medicine, including how it differs from conventional care, the conditions it commonly treats and its benefits.

What Is Root-Cause Medicine?

Root-cause medicine is grounded in treating the root cause of pain rather than just treating symptoms. This holistic approach to care considers the body, mind and spirit, and how all three interact with each other. Functional medicine combines preventive health care, lifestyle, genetics and environmental factors into each patient’s individualized treatment plan, aiming to help them feel truly whole.

A New Wave of Health Care

In today’s society, we’re seeing a shift in how people approach their health. Whether it’s practicing preventive health care by scheduling their annual screenings or using wearables to track their health, patients are interacting with their care like never before. We’re also noticing that they want their care to be more holistic.

How Functional Medicine Differs From Conventional Care

Essentially, functional medicine takes a whole-person approach, treating the root cause of pain or illness and striving to implement preventive care whenever possible. On the other hand, conventional medicine tends to be more reactive and addresses concerns when they arise, usually resulting in prescribed medications or necessary surgeries that may have been preventable.

Treating Symptoms vs. Addressing Underlying Causes

While there’s nothing wrong with treating symptoms when they arise, there may be a more effective way to navigate your care.

For example, if a patient has high blood pressure, a conventional medicine approach would be to take medication. While this may help in the short term, it likely won’t put their blood pressure into a normal range. But with a functional approach, daily meditation may be added to help naturally reduce their blood pressure in addition to the medication for a more holistic treatment plan.

Conditions Commonly Addressed With Root-Cause Approaches

Functional medicine can be used to treat a variety of conditions, including:

• Autoimmune disorders
• Cardiometabolic disease prevention
• Chronic disease
• Chronic fatigue
• Gastrointestinal function
• Hair loss
• Hormone imbalances
• Menopause
• Nutrient deficiencies
• Skin issues (i.e., acne, eczema, psoriasis)
• Stress and anxiety
• Thyroid conditions

Rest assured, our specialists can help you identify treatment options tailored to your unique health needs and goals.

Benefits of Functional Medicine

Beyond addressing your symptoms, functional medicine may help to treat underlying health concerns, better support your mental and emotional health and help you to implement healthier lifestyle habits. Other benefits of root-cause medicine include:

• A multidisciplinary approach
• Disease management
• Highly personalized care
• Holistic wellness
• Possible reduced medication dependence

If you're looking for holistic care that offers benefits like these, our dedicated primary care providers are here to help. If you don’t already have one, find a primary care provider near you.

Helping You Embrace a Lifetime of Wellness

When it comes to your health, you deserve the root cause of your pain or illness to be treated, not just your symptoms. Learn more about our wellness care services or our AdventHealth Whole Health Institute and how we can nurture your whole health through functional medicine.