The
Academy of Functional Medicine,
Dentistry and Psychology
The Certification Program™ provided by The Academy of Functional Medicine, Dentistry
and Psychology is an educational,webinar-based program which focuses on
functional medicine testing and treatment strategies as it relates to all healthcare disorders with a special
focus on the diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychiatric and psychological disorders. The program is offered
to healthcare practitioners and health coaches.The emphasis of the curriculum will be on
learninghow to think about medical and psychiatric disorders through biochemical and physiological
investigations, rather than on what to
think or simply learning and memorizing facts, which is a more
conventional approach to learning about healthcare matters.The primary course objective will be to establish anew way of thinking about medical and
psychiatric disorders. Once participants begin to appreciate the wisdom of investigating the unique, root,
biochemical causes of suffering in each patient, they may never be satisfied with guessing (i.e.,
“If you don’t test, you’ve guessed”). This exciting paradigm shift can refresh one’s career as every patient approached in
this way can teach us new information if we are willing to investigate the underlying, scientific basis of
their suffering.
What is Functional Medicine and How Does It Integrate Into and Potentiate
Conventional and Alternative Medicine?
Modern medicine has made astonishing advances in the treatment
of acute healthcare problems, but increasingly healthcare consumers suffer from chronic diseases, such as heart
disease, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, addictions, depression, anxiety and auto-immune diseases. While many tools to
address chronic health problems are in the doctor’s toolbox, Functional Medicine offers a whole
set of specialized technologies to assist practitioners in getting to the root biochemical causes of these
chronic problems.
Because of Functional Medicine, healthcare practitioners and
consumers alike can now relegate palliative models of treatment (i.e., treating only the symptoms of
chronic medical and psychiatric problems) to treatments of last resort instead of treatments of first resort.
Because of Functional Medicine, healthcare practitioners have a new treatment of first resort which is
potentially curative, because it addresses the underlying risk factors of chronic medical and psychiatric
disorders, the nutritional, metabolic, toxicological, immune and epigenetic problems which amassed scientific
studies strongly suggest are causative or serious exacerbating factors of all chronic medical and psychiatric
disorders.
Functional Medicine also integrates into and potentiates all
conventional Western medicine and CAM (complementary/alternative medicine) practices by creating a scientific
rationale for prevention through nutrition, diet, lifestyle changes, stress-management techniques and exercise; for
the use of the latest laboratory testing and other diagnostic techniques (blood, urine, saliva, stool and hair
testing); and for prescribed combinations of drugs and/or botanical medicines, supplements, therapeutic diets and
detoxification programs.
The critical and potentially curative, biochemical information
provided by the Functional Medicine, is the long-awaited, missing “body” component in the holistic model of mind,
body, energy and spirit treatment, which lays the critical, science-based, physical and sustainable foundation for
the mind/energy/spirit approaches to actually work.
