Should You See a Functional Medicine Practitioner?
Finding the right healthcare provider that suits your needs in 2022 can feel impossible. It may also feel challenging to understand the type of treatment you need from a doctor, how they will administer it, and whether they have your best interests.
Although most doctors you’ll meet generally want to help their patients, resource limitations and conventional training can sometimes place unwanted constraints on a healthcare professional, restricting them from providing care deemed ‘appropriate’ by health insurance companies.
Specialists like our functional medicine doctor in Ft. Lauderdale Dr. Faride Ramos, have training just like any other physician. However, they add specific training, education, and experience with holistic medicine. Their ultimate goal is to get to the root cause of a patient’s problem, i.e., what actually causes a disease, instead of just treating symptoms.
Functional medicine remains patient-oriented, involving specialists spending a significant amount of time with patients, listening to and gathering information about their history, genetic predispositions, environmental factors, and lifestyle, all of which can influence long-term health and wellness.
Dr. Faride Ramos, our functional medicine doctor in Ft. Lauderdale, works to see patients as an individual, a whole person, not simply their disease or a set of symptoms.
Do You Really Feel Your Best
Conventional practitioners often view optimal health as a range of ‘acceptable’ wellness. If a patient falls within the ‘acceptable’ range, they consider their job performed and complete.
Contrarily, functional medicine goes beyond simply treating a patient until they fit within a range. Dr. Faride Ramos wants you to feel the very best you can. This means arriving as close to optimal as possible (and staying there). Under the tenets of functional medicine, this is where a functional medicine practitioner wants you to be and where you’ll feel your absolute best.
Does Your PCP Hear You?
When talking, a doctor will often listen for keywords and assign a diagnosis. This process involves quick thinking for the best possible treatment options for swift and easy administration and resolving a patient’s concerns.
In modern healthcare, many primary care physicians (PCPs) are overworked, with far more patients than they will ever have time to spend the necessary time with to treat to maximize their health and wellness properly.
Unfortunately, this also means they scan their patients’ words to figure out the best solution in their time, and an insurance policy may cover within the restrictions.
Many patients may end up with a diagnosis that labels the problem but doesn’t fix the root cause behind a condition. Functional medicine views a patient as a whole individual when addressing healthcare concerns, ensuring they receive treatment that addresses the root cause of whatever may ail them.
Do You Have All the Options to Heal at Your Disposal?
Most conventional providers are doing their best job under the constraints of an insurance-based care system and traditional medical training. This might also mean they won’t or can’t offer you every available option. Furthermore, this also means some testing and analysis to assess your condition isn’t available.
Through improper testing and swift diagnosis, traditional medicine can often involve treating symptoms of discomfort and strife without curing the problem leading to the symptoms. In many ways, this creates a situation where doctors are metaphorically treating a bullet wound with a quick and easy band aid.
Are Your Numbers Normal but You Still Don’t Feel Well?
In conventional medicine, care providers will choose assessments based on the symptoms you experience. These tests aren’t always the best method to determine the actual cause behind a patient’s problems. Additionally, the lens many physicians use to interpret results is looking for ‘normal’ but not ‘optimal’.
With a wide variety of tests to address many health concerns, many doctors practicing traditional medicine aren’t intentionally withholding results and data from their patients. They don’t know about them like a functional medicine doctor in Ft. Lauderdale like Dr. Faride Ramos does.
Invest in Yourself and Take Your Life Back with Functional Medicine and Dr. Faride Ramos, M.D.
Starting the journey from traditional healthcare to functional medicine may initially seem overwhelming. As a unique individual, discovering what is best for your health and wellness takes time, trial, and error.
Being confident in taking that first step and switching to functional care is essential. To learn more about functional medicine and what our doctor in the South Florida community can do for you, reach out to our team today!
