Functional Medicine is a holistic approach to healthcare that focuses on identifying and addressing the root causes of illness by combining traditional philosophies with conventional advances. Through functional lab tests, personalised nutrition, and lifestyle assessment, functional medicine practitioners work to uncover the unique underlying issues contributing to an individual’s health problems whilst appreciating all systems within the body.
The conventional approach views the body through the lens of a keyhole by only treating the symptoms, functional medicine seeks to gain a deeper understanding of a person’s entire physical, physiological, emotional, and spiritual well-being to create a comprehensive treatment plan that promotes long-term health.
By taking this comprehensive view of an individual’s health history and current lifestyle, functional medicine practitioners can create a unique and personalized treatment plan that is tailored to their bespoke needs in contrast to conventional therapy which largely utilises a one-size fits all approach. Through this philosophy, functional medicine can help treat and prevent many chronic diseases and health issues.
Overall, functional medicine is an evolving and comprehensive system of healthcare that focuses on individualised care to identify the root causes of illness and promote long-term health and wellness. It is a powerful and necessary tool to protect the disappearing health in society and the growing rate of dis-ease.
How can Functional Medicine be applied to health coaching?
Never has health been discussed so much on a macro-level but neglected as much on a micro-level. Our current health care model is more focused on disease management, this serves its purpose with emergency intervention, yet misses a huge opportunity as it only steps in once the problem has become big enough. In contrast, functional medicine takes a pre-emptive approach as opposed to a reactive response.
Health coaches have a unique opportunity to attract clients on what they want but also provide them with what they need. This enables mass influence into society to protect health prior to disease progression by capitalising on health challenges before conditions progress to a chronic state and become unmanageable.
Health coaches that use a functional medicine approach provide a deeper level of value, higher quality of service and incomparable results for their clients and patients compared to other health professionals that do not utilise this modality.
When it comes to health coaching, functional medicine can be applied to optimise overall health and well-being. By utilising functional medicine principles, a coach can assess an individual’s lifestyle choices and biochemistry data from lab tests to form a comprehensive picture of their current state of health. Through functional lab assessments and understanding the human body, practitioners can uncover underlying functional imbalances and nutritional deficiencies that can lead to chronic conditions like mental health issues, gut health problems, impaired immunity, fertility challenges and many other dysfunctions.
Additionally, functional medicine incorporates lifestyle modifications such as stress management techniques, dietary changes, lifestyle counselling and exercise plans in tandem with traditional health coaching strategies to promote overall wellness.
By evaluating the patient instead of treating symptoms alone, functional medicine is revolutionizing the way we view our health and treat medical conditions.
One philosophy we teach is that it is more important to understand the patient than the disease the patient has.
Why join the Institute of Health?
The Institute of Health, formally known as Carter Institute, is the fastest-growing functional medicine and business online course.
It builds the next generation of industry health professionals and helps them create global impact, freedom & life-long meaning — by teaching functional medicine, nutrition, and business with its innovative and disruptive model.
Due to its outstanding growth and industry impact, the Institute has gained global recognition from the likes of Forbes, Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance
The Institute of Health is engineered around 5 fundamental components:
- It’s immersive education library (holding over 24 core seminars, 441 units, 100’s of hours of recorded online material with its findings reinforced from over 1,500 high-quality published medical references)
- The purpose-driven community hosting industry-leading professionals from spanning over 30 countries with direct guidance from our entire team
Structured daily world-class workshops hosted by our industry-famous facilitators - Bespoke business buildouts disclosing strategies that have successfully scaled students to 6 & 7 figure businesses