FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE
Functional Medicine is the medicine of WHY?
Personalised Approach - precision nutrition
Kirsten looks to identify root cause imbalances, working together collaboratively with each client to let the body work its magic, to rebalance, heal and thrive.
There is no one size fits all rule in the functional medicine model - which seeks to determine the root cause of disease. This model of medicine understands that any one illness can have multiple causes and depends on the interaction between individual’s genes, nutrition, environment, and lifestyle. And only treatments that address the right cause will have lasting benefit instead of symptom suppression.
The NHS, with its stretched resources and focus on acute care, sometimes fall short in providing suitable and comprehensive care for chronic conditions. Partnerships between NHS and functional medicine practitioners to create integrative medicine are emerging as delivering successful medical care.
The functional medicine model examines multiple systems in the body such as the balance of the HPA (adrenal) axis, thyroid and sex hormones, mitochondrial health, methylation, gut health and mental wellbeing and interaction with diet and genes (see nutrigenomics).
What happens in the initial consultation?
Each client completes a comprehensive questionnaire in advance of the consultation that you return via email. Using both the questionnaire and comprehensive case taking, these topics are explored in the first hour of the initial consultation.
· Medical history
· Genetic history
· Nutrition
· Lifestyle
· Environment
· Stress
By developing an understanding of how an individual came to have their current health issues, she can organise seemingly separate issues into a complete story of each individuals’ health status and correct these imbalances to restore wellbeing with an individualised plan.
The final 30 minutes of the consultation are then spent exploring your current dietary patterns (including the 4-day food diary which is included in the questionnaire). And Kirsten will explain what isn’t serving you and discuss the plan of action, which will be emailed back to you within 48 hours.
Kirsten will devise an individualised plan to keep you satiated, reducing food cravings, to optimise your well-being.
Some people want a fairly strict plan, and other people can only manage small changes – she works with each client accordingly. Sometimes clients aren't going especially wrong with their diet (although it’s unusual not to have some things to improve on), and just need a few tweaks. Others need a more comprehensive programme and lots of support.
Remember, it’s a working partnership - it depends on the complexity of your health issues, your priorities, what the underlying drivers are, plus your budget & so on. So, no two treatment plans are ever the same.
The follow up consultations are normally 3-6 weeks later to discuss progress, update the plan and supplementation, and where appropriate, review test results - see here for details on lab testing. She will then work on areas identified as needing support - such as emotional eating, the gut, neurotransmitters, HPA axis, hormones, thyroid, nutritional deficiencies, blood sugar imbalances, lifestyle etc, depending on priority and importance.
For further information on the consultations, including pricing go to https://www.eatyourselftohealth.com/services
Confused by what you should be eating?
Optimum nutrition provides the raw materials for health maintenance and repair, allowing us to feel and perform at our best. Kirsten sees profound improvements in her clients' well-being (see Testimonials) because what we eat can undoubtedly have an immense impact on everything from the health of our brains, our mood and hormone balance through to our vitality, digestive health, weight, and immunity.
HOWEVER, the science of nutrition is forever evolving, making it hard for the non-specialist to keep up. There are just so many conflicting reports in the media about the right approach to follow, whether it be low fat, low carb, a ketogenic diet, vegan, intermittent fasting or the latest faddy weight-loss and celebrity-backed trends. And over the last fifty or so years, our diets have changed radically, as has the nutritional content of our food. It has also become harder to maintain healthy habits when processed and highly palatable sugary and refined foods are so ubiquitous. Furthermore, our modern lives are becoming busier and more stressful. During this period, there’s been a sharp rise in all sorts chronic and stress-related health conditions, as well as obesity and its related illnesses such as type II diabetes. It is in part driven by chronic (often silent) inflammation due to dietary imbalances, our increased stress load, plus our sedentary lifestyles, poor sleep, gut health, the environment, our toxic burden and so on.
Therefore, working with an experienced professional can pay dividends. Kirsten can make sense of the dietary dogma and personalise a plan to suit you, your unique biology and lifestyle based on her many years of clinical experience and evidence-based nutritional science.
References
Beidelschies M, Alejandro-Rodriguez M, Ji X, Lapin B, Hanaway P, Rothberg MB. Association of the Functional Medicine Model of Care with Patient-Reported Health-Related Quality-of-Life Outcomes. JAMA Netw Open. 2019 Oct 2;2(10): e1914017
Shurney D. The Evolution of Lifestyle Medicine. American Journal of Health Promotion. 2023;37(7):1013-1017.
Fadnes, L.T., Celis-Morales, C., Økland, JM. et al. Life expectancy can increase by up to 10 years following sustained shifts towards healthier diets in the United Kingdom. Nat Food 4, 961–965 (2023).