by Dr. David Pollack
Recently, I was on a quick weekend getaway in West Palm Beach, Florida, and I passed a store exclaiming 
“Functional Medicine.” The window laid out in detail, and in large font, treatments, including IV vitamins, hormone replacement, chelation therapies, and other medical therapies to add what might be missing or remove that which is unwanted in the body. While it’s certainly a great change and improvement in the practice of medicine to focus not just on the symptoms of disease but improve the quality of life, I would suggest this is not true functional medicine despite much of the functional industry rallying around such therapies.
Function of the body is the sum total of the quality, efficiency and ability of the body’s systems, organs, glands and tissues—all the way down to the cellular level. In modern medicine, often a symptom or out-of-range laboratory finding is treated by directly trying to affect that symptom or lab finding. For example, for a headache, use an anti-inflammatory or for a low vitamin level, prescribe the vitamin. Rarely, is it asked why there is a headache or a vitamin deficiency.
For a hormone imbalance, so-called functional medicine practitioners would give hormones, such as estrogen, progesterone and testosterone creams, concentrates or pills. A true functional medicine/nutrition practitioner would evaluate the sum total of the body’s function to address the actual cause of hormone deficiency, which may include anything from the more obvious weakness of the gonads or adrenal glands (will discuss more in Part 2) to perhaps the metabolic hormone and fat controls of the liver, to even just the prowess of the digestive system and its ability to digest, absorb, filter and deliver the proper building blocks for hormone production.
The traditional medical method requires a lifetime of treatment that never brings the body back to homeostasis, or the ability to balance its own hormones and chemistries, versus true functional therapies that improve the body’s ability to balance itself. I would strongly suggest that taking hormones does not represent or replicate what the body actually does and may, in fact, be missing bigger issues not taken into account by the supplementary therapy.
To clarify, there are dozens of interrelated, interconvertible hormones in the family of estrogen and progesterone. Just satisfying those hormones will not balance out the greater system, potentially leaving important imbalances in related hormones that control weight, immunity, sugar balance and cravings, blood pressure and cholesterol, to name a few. Taking thyroid hormones does not address the other functions of the thyroid, such as calcium control; no wonder there is so much osteoporosis in people taking these medications. True functional practitioners would take into account the complete picture and function of all the body to help create widespread and long-term improvements in our health.
Source: Dr. David Pollack, of Pollack Wellness Institute (66 Commack Rd., Ste. 204, Commack). For more information, call 631-462-0801 or visit PollackWellness.com.
