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Anyone Can Practice Functional Medicine, with Terry Wahls, MD
In this video, Terry Wahls, MD, describes how any practitioner can practice Functional Medicine to help their patients create health. Lifestyle interventions and personalized nutrition can help many patients with chronic, non-communicable diseases.
Transcript:
The key thing is: your biggest tool is diet and lifestyle, and providing meaning; having people realize that they have control. They can provide meaning to their life as it is going to unfold.
You don’t need a lot of testing to offer [guidance on] diet, health behaviors, and meaning. To all of my colleagues out there who are still in the VA or who are in an environment that says, “You can’t do Functional Medicine because you can’t have all the expensive testing,” I say: “You can do Functional Medicine; you can offer diet and lifestyle [therapy]. You can offer a reminder that they still have control, that they can still apply meaning to their life as it is going to unfold.”
You can do Functional Medicine in whatever environment you are in. It doesn’t require expensive testing. It doesn’t require lots of time. It requires a shift in how you think about disease and health. It requires a commitment. You are helping your patients create health, and this will have some impact on their disease, likely reducing the need for blood pressure meds, for diabetic meds, for pain meds, for psychiatric meds, and eventually for disease-modifying therapies.
