Functional Medicine determines how and why illness occurs and restores healthy by addressing the root causes of conditions or imbalances for each individual.
While the current conventional model is excellent for acute care (things like infections, traumas, life-saving emergency surgeries, etc), it is ill suited for chronic conditions that impact every day life. Take for example the escalating rates of diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, obesity, autoimmune disorders, and other common conditions that effect millions.
While the current conventional model may not be the best environment or model for addressing these epidemics due to poor work environments that make health care practitioners see an unruly amount of patients per hour, questionable corporations that put fiduciary gain over patient health, and political involvement and ties between health care, food industry, big pharma and governmental policy agencies (I won’t get hung up on this here but there is a lot to discuss) — the Functional Medicine model is the perfect solution for addressing and reversing these chronic conditions.
The reason is that Functional Medicine is an individualized, patient-centered, science-based approach that empowers patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of conditions and imbalances and promote optimal wellness. It requires a detailed understanding of each patient’s genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle factors and leverages that data to direct personalized treatment plans that lead to improved patient outcomes.
By addressing root cause, rather than symptoms, practitioners become oriented to identifying the complexity of disease. They may find one condition has many different causes and, likewise, one cause may result in many different conditions. As a result, Functional Medicine treatment targets the specific manifestations of disease in each individual.
Beyond the Diagnosis
Previous “diagnoses” (i.e. full medical history) may be beneficial upon starting to work with a functional practitioner, however, unlike the conventional medicine model - the end point isn’t the diagnosis, rather this is the starting point for a functional practitioner to work backwards to identify and address the root cause.
As the graphic illustrates, a “diagnosis” can be the result of more than one cause. For example, depression can be caused by many different factors, including inflammation. Likewise, a cause such as inflammation may lead to a number of different diagnoses, including depression. The precise manifestation of each cause depends on the individual’s genes, environment, and lifestyle, and only treatments that address the right cause will have lasting benefit beyond symptom suppression.
Why Work with Dr. Morgan?
Dr. Morgan Miller, PharmD has seen both sides. She was clinically trained and practiced as a clinical pharmacist both in a community setting and specialty pharmacy setting - short story - she understands the conventional side of medicine and has a deep understanding of how chemicals work in the body.
Upon discovering functional medicine, she has taken and continues to take numerous hours of continuing education from the Institute of Functional Medicine and School of Applied Functional Medicine as well as other cutting edge seminars so that she can continue to serve her clients best and help them get to the root cause of their conditions and teach them how to let their body heal itself naturally.
Her passion is to empower people by educating them on how to allow the body to heal itself naturally and provide access to tools to do this.
