Not all Functional Medicine offices are effective, and some hurt patients.
There are problems in Functional Medicine that need to be openly discussed.
Over the years, I’ve listened closely to my patients so that I can learn what is making them sick. Because I commonly see people who have worked with many different doctors before finding my office, I have learned a lot about how different practices operate.
It isn’t always pretty.
Let’s talk about some of the pitfalls that I’ve observed in the field, so that you can get the best possible medical care. While there are exceptions to the below red flags, I hope these principles help you identify what offices are likely to help you heal and which may be a waste of time and money.
Red Flag 1: If a doctor orders tests before meeting you.
Unfortunately, it is standard practice in many offices to require multiple tests to be completed before the doctor will see you. This is a red flag that the doctor does not understand what issues are most important to helping you heal, and they do not know how best to prioritize your treatment.
The doctors who do this have usually marked up the cost of the tests and make a steady profit by selling you the testing. This is a huge problem.
It wastes your time.
It makes treatment less effective. The more tests that are ordered, the higher chance of some of those tests returning a false positive - a situation where the test is positive but you don’t have the disease. This means sending you and your doctor chasing problems that are not real.
It wastes money that could instead go towards your treatment.
Red Flag 2: If your practitioner aggressively pushes supplements.
The typical Functional Medicine doctor’s office relies on supplement sales to make up a large part of their income. This commonly leads to a situation where the doctor’s thinking is clouded by financial bias. It is important that you work with a doctor prioritizes your best interest, rather than their profit margin.
Clues that this may be happening is if every symptom you mention is given a different supplement, if the doctor write supplement names the margins of labs without speaking to you, or if you are simply recommended a huge amount of supplements as your treatment. Supplements are supplemental, and doctors that obsesses about supplements tend to mess obvious causes of disease.
Red Flag 3: If your doctor recommends multiple treatments all at once
This is concerning because it frequently leads to unnecessary treatment and is usually a waste of your time and money.
Think about it like this: if your doctor gives you three treatments to start all at once, and you feel better, how would you know which one helped? And if you feel better, do you need to take those treatments forever?
Or if you feel worse, how do we know which treatment is to blame? Should you stop all of them or just some of them? Perhaps two are helpful, and one is not - but the point is it is impossible to know.
Overly complicated treatment plans lead to more questions than answers. The sad truth is that prescribing too many things at once means that many Functional and Integrative doctors go their entire career without figuring out what is helping their patients, and are only able to keep throwing the kitchen sink at their patients.
The more treatments you are asked to use at once, the more skeptical you should be about your doctor’s ability to help you.
Red Flag 4: If your doctor seems overly dogmatic.
Some doctors have already decided what is wrong with you before you enter their office. This is becase they have become attached to certain ideas or causes that cloud their judgment. If your doctor is constantly blaming one thing (gluten, MTHFR, glyphosate, thyroid dysfunction …) as the cause for all health problems then you should start looking for someone who is more open minded and is able to take a broader approach.
You don’t want to be given a diagnosis that you don’t have simply because the doctor is interested in a particular topic.
One sign this may be happening is when you tell them that you aren’t getting better and their immediate response is to say you aren’t doing it enough or the right way.
Would you like more information, or to schedule an appointment?