Functional Medicine: How Dysfunction Leads to Disease

Functional medicine is part of integrative medicine. There are three phases in the movement from health to disease. The first phase concerns lifestyle and how poor lifestyle choices move the system into increasing dysfunction. If the changes are rapid and severe then this is called acute disorder; and if slow and persistent then this is called chronic disorder. In the early phase of dysfunction there may be few symptoms and signs but the symptoms and signs rapidly or slowly become more obvious. The symptoms and signs at first are only recording the fact that the system as a whole in under stress and not functioning well. Over time dysfunction may lead to disease. The conventional model of medicine tends to focus its management on treating symptoms or treating the disease if possible. The integrative model pays attention to lifestyle changes; moving the dysfunction back to optimum function and only treating the disease if indicated

Evidence-based medicine: four fundamental problems with the randomized clinical trial (RCT) used to document chemical medicine.

Randomized clinical trials (RCT) have been accepted as the golden standard of testing, thus making chemical medicine "evidence based". The RCT is based on four assumptions: 1) The placebo effect is represented by a placebo pill, 2) it is possible to make a double-blind test with biologically active drugs, 3) beneficial and harmful effects of drugs are fairly measured in RCTs, and 4) an appropriate time frame for the test is used. We have found problems with these assumptions: 1) The placebo effect provided by close relationships to a physician is stronger than an inert pill, 2) double-blind tests cannot be made with biologically active drugs, as these leave an internal clue in the patient that destroys the blinding (active placebo), 3) lack of global outcome measures makes toxic effects invisible for the test and magnifies minor effects to make clinically insignificant positive effects look important, and 4) RCTs are used in such a brief time frame that side effects and harm are not properly detected. The four errors combine into a serious error: The RCT-procedure induces a strong bias in favor of any toxic drug tested. RCTs can turn drugs that are only toxic and not beneficial at all into products sold as.useful chemical medicine. Many pharmaceutical drugs on the market today are tested only with this flawed RTC-procedure, and we recommend that these drugs be tested again using a rational method. If drugs are not more helpful than placebo, then we should return to classic psychosocial holistic medicine.