Functional Medicine Approach to Fatigue

Chances are functional medicine looks at fatigue differently than you do. Functional medicine also looks at fatigue differently than traditional medicine does. Functional medicine focuses on the prevention and treatment of chronic disease and conditions by finding the root cause of the imbalance or symptoms that a person is experiencing. Functional medicine takes a whole-person approach to explain fatigue. Because everything is interconnected, there is usually more than one imbalance that can cause fatigue. Let’s take a look at functional medicine solutions to help fight fatigue.

Functional Medicine Solutions to Help Fight Fatigue: Checklist

When searching for functional medicine solutions to help fight fatigue, we strive to answer the following questions.

Is your diet making you tired?
Is your body deficient in essential vitamins, minerals and amino acids?
Do you have low hormones? (especially thyroid and adrenal hormones)
Is your body filled with toxins?
Are you suffering from a chronic infection?

Functional Medicine Solutions to Help Fight Fatigue: Hormonal Imbalances

Hormones work together in the human body. In order for the body to function properly, it is necessary for all of your hormones to work together. If one hormone is out of balance, it can throw everything off. These hormones include the thyroid, adrenal and sex hormones.

Functional Medicine Solutions to Help Fight Fatigue: Understanding and Fighting Fatigue

Fatigue is extremely common. From very debilitating fatigue (chronic fatigue syndrome) to just waking up tired, fatigue can make day to day life much more challenging than it has to be. Fatigue can cause problems with concentration, work and school performance and relationships.Functional medicine takes a whole-person approach to fatigue. Let’s take a look at how functional medicine works to identify imbalances and fight fatigue.

Functional medicine works to understand the problem of fatigue. Through a complete medical history and laboratory data, functional medicine gets to the bottom of fatigue.

Practitioners of functional medicine work to replenish the identified nutritional deficiencies whenever possible. When necessary, functional medicine does use supplements. Some individuals may have a caloric deficit in their diet. Others may have significant micronutrient deficiencies. Potential deficiencies that can cause fatigue may include folate, zinc, iron, magnesium, B12, B3 and B6.Functional medicine works to understand the gastrointestinal tract functions. It also works to optimize the health of your gastrointestinal tract. If nutrients are unable to be properly ingested and assimilated, fatigue can occur.

Those working in functional medicine work to understand inflammation in an individual;s body and work to reduce it. Whether inflammation is caused by infectious disease, sugar dysregulation, smoking, foreign food-based molecules or any other cause, fatigue may be triggered.

Functional medicine understands hormone function and knows how to optimize it. Whether you are experiencing a thyroid hormone imbalance, low adrenal function (or low cortisol), low estrogen or testosterone or high insulin, hormonal imbalances can lead directly to fatigue or through their combined effects on the body (such as obesity contributing to sleep apnea).

Practitioners of functional medicine work to understand and balance moods. Depression can lead to fatigue. Depression can also be caused by imbalances in a number of neurotransmitters. Optimizing neurotransmitters through food and supplementation can help to alleviate fatigue. Stress can also contribute to fatigue through this same mechanism.

Functional medicine helps to remove toxic exposures and toxic burden from your life. Heavy metals, including mercury and lead, can directly cause fatigue by poisoning our energy-generating mechanisms or mitochondria.

Your functional medicine doctor works to understand everything about your genetic makeup. Genetic inefficiencies can lead to fatigue.

In closing, everything that happens to you on a daily basis can lead to fatigue. Fatigue is often the result of a complex set of factors throughout your body opposed to being related to one single cause. For each individual, fatigue may be different. Functional medicine works to identify the root cause of your fatigue so that you can get back to a life without fatigue.

Matthew Gianforte, DC serves the Kansas City and Johnson County area focusing on the underlying cause of diseases through a whole systems approach with Functional Medicine and Chiropractic. Stop managing symptoms and start treating the underlying cause of disease, thereby addressing our chronic disease epidemic. Connect on Facebook, and Google+.