What is Functional Nutrition?
The word “functional” is being thrown around a lot in health and wellness circles these days. If you’re looking for a natural way to ease your arthritis, cool down the inflammation in your gut, battle brain fog, or lose weight, you may have come across “Functional Nutrition” as an answer to your woes.
But what IS Functional Nutrition?
It’s related to Functional Medicine, but there are some key distinctions.
Functional Nutrition is a modality that can be used alone, or it can complement the work you’re doing with your physician, naturopath, acupuncturist, or other health practitioner.
Functional Nutrition, like Functional Medicine, is based on these three key principles:
1. Addressing the root causes of your suffering, rather than chasing or suppressing symptoms
2. Using systems that take into account the unique aspects of your body, your life, and your circumstances, rather than using “one-size-fits-all” formulas that can never truly fit all
3. Fostering a therapeutic partnership between you and the practitioner, rather than a top-down hierarchical relationship where you are simply asked to follow orders
Functional Nutrition also fills a very specific GAP in healthcare that you and your health may be suffering from.
That GAP is between doctors and patients.
The doctor knows and speaks in medical terms. You as the patient know how you feel, what you’re going through, and where you’d rather be (your goals.)
Your language and the doctor’s language often don’t match up. This creates misunderstandings, feelings of not being seen or heard, and trouble uncovering the true root causes of your signs and symptoms so that you can finally find relief.
Functional Nutrition fills this GAP with a deep understanding of food, physiology, and humanity.
It’s a logical, systematic way of uncovering what ails you while at the same time paying heed to your unique life circumstances, and recognizing that you’re not a disease or a diagnosis. You’re a person. And you deserve to be treated with respect and reverence.
Functional Nutrition is the future of healthcare, not because it’s new or fancy, but because it brings us back to the foundation of what healthcare should be about — the needs of the patient.
To learn more about how functional nutrition can help you unravel whatever symptoms have been keeping you from living your best life, visit the Functional Nutrition Alliance.
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Andrea Nakayama is a functional nutritionist and educator leading thousands of clients, students, and practitioners around the world in a revolution reclaiming ownership over one’s own health. In the curriculum of the Functional Nutrition Lab, her online school for practitioners, Andrea teaches the science and art of the functional nutrition practice through the lens of where food meets physiology.
Within her own clinic at the Functional Nutrition Alliance, Andrea and her team of nutritionists work with the chronic ailments most providers pass over, and she is regularly consulted as the nutrition expert for the toughest clinical cases in the practices of world-renowned doctors.
Connect with Andrea on Twitter @andreanakayama
And on Facebook.
