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Functional Medicine

Functional Medicine

Functional Medicine is a root cause approach to healthcare that examines body systems more than the symptoms that arise when the systems are already out-of-balance. Simone’s approach to your health is that your symptoms are your body’s language, its way of telling you that something is wrong. Therefore, to take pills to suppress the symptoms without knowing what is wrong is like taking the batteries out of your smoke detector because the noise is stopping you from getting on with what you would rather be doing.

It’s more important to understand the imbalances in your body’s basic systems and restore balance rather than name the disease and match the pill to the ill.

Mark Hyman, MD“FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE

What is Functional Medicine?

Functional medicine is a structured approach to healthcare that is constantly evolving as we learn more about nutrigenomics – the impact our nutrition has on our genetic expression – and how our environment and lifestyle impact our physical and mental health.

What is functional Testing?

At Barefoot Medicine we use non-invasive tests i.e. stool, urine and breath tests, to gauge the activity in your gut microbiome, toxic exposure levels, hormonal health and much more. These are not ‘diagnostic’ tests, so there is nothing to fear from them. Rather, they give us a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at what is happening in your body systems. The tests help us answer questions such as: does your body have the basic nutrients it needs for the core systems to work? Are those nutrients able to be broken down and delivered to where they are needed? Is your body able to detoxify itself and eliminate all the waste produced effectively? If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, then at best, you are not functioning at your full capacity. At worst, you are heading towards disease and long-term health problems.

What Happens in a Functional Medicine Programme?

Timeline

The first thing we do is plot all your symptoms on a timeline and we add life events, predisposing factors from your family history (antecedents), factors that are prolonging or supporting the symptoms (mediators) and triggers that are events that may spark off an episode. We then look at this together to see the trajectory of your health patterns over the years so we can work back to the root cause.

Functional Medicine Timeline
WHO PROMIS Questionnaire

Each month of working together we assess your wellbeing using the World Health Organization Patient Reported Outcome Measures in Clinical Practice. This is to keep an eye on how you are actually feeling, not just on how your symptoms are changing.

World Health Organization PROMIS Score

Functional Medicine Matrix

Functional Medicine Matrix

Your symptoms are then listed under seven headings which each correspond to a body system. Each system is then scored and the one with the highest number of symptoms is where we begin the focus of our investigations, so we can interrupt the vicious cycle of one problem triggering another.

Functional Testing

This corresponds to the ‘analyze’ and then ‘report’ parts of our D.A.R.I.N.G. Approach to healthcare. Non-invasive test kits will be sent to you at home for you to provide a stool, urine or breath sample. The courier will then collect it from you and take it to the laboratory for analysis. The tests will be selected for you to provide the most information from the least number of tests. Typically we will look at gut function and metabolism, but we may also need to look at food intolerance, toxic exposure, mold, glyphosate, hormone levels etc.

Home gut function test
Integrated Medicine

Integrated Medicine

Integration is a key part of your health strategy. This means integrating your functional medicine programme with your lifestyle in a way that is realistic, achievable and accountable. It also needs to have an element of fun so that it does not become a chore! Integration also means gathering a team of people around you who can support you in your recovery, but communication is key. For this we use an app called Healthie which not only lets you book or reschedule your appointments, but you can send a secure chat message to Simone, view your lab results online, access your meal plans and all the supporting information. If you choose to share this with your other healthcare practitioners you overcome the need to repeat yourself all the time and can just direct them to the relevant ramification on your health portal.

Food As Medicine

Everyone knows the government mantra of eating ‘five-a-day’ but this is just the first step towards using your food as your medicine.

You may regard your diet as being healthy, or make a conscious decision to eat more fruit and vegetables, which is absolutely great, but is still not the same. We have meal plans to guide you according to your health conditon.

  • Anti-inflammaotry meal plan
  • Detoxification plan
  • PCOS plan for hormonal balance
  • Cardio-metaboloic meal plan
  • Mitochondrial support for chronic fatigue
  • Core Food Plan
  • Anti-Candida diet

There are too many to list, but certainly something to benefit everyone. Some people may simply want guidelines with lists of foods that fall into each category and information about how many items from each category they need daily. Others may prefer our interactive online meal plans that let you print out grocery lists and recipes for 3 or 5 days of the week. Try the 28-day plan free to get a taste for how it works!

Anti inflammatory meal plan

want to know how functional medicine can help you?

Book a free
15-minute Call

No obligation call to find out whether functional medicine is the right approach for you to either optimise your health for peak performance, or to overcome a current health conditon.