Functional Medicine Physician: 
Located in Colorado springs, but accessible by teleconference

If you are in Colorado Springs and you are looking for a functional medicine physician, then you have just lucked out. At Thrive Health Systems, we have two functional medicine doctors ready to help you defeat your chronic illness naturally and healthfully.

Thrive Health Systems uses diet, exercise, food allergy tests, lab tests, cleanses and more to help you overcome your illness and get your life back.

Thrive Health Systems is an integrated health clinic, meaning that we also have medical practitioners on staff as well as functional medicine physicians, which can greatly facilitate your healing process. When we order a blood test, it is as simple as sending you next door. When it is good to have a second or third pair of eyes on a blood test, it is as simple as going next door. An integrated look at your health, may be just what you need.

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What is a functional medicine physician?

Functional medicine physicians can be a medical doctor (MD), doctor of osteopathic medicine (DO) or chiropractic doctor (DC). In fact, the Institute of Functional Medicine was started by a former emergency room medical doctor. 

Functional medicine physicians root their philosophy in an idea call "adaptive physiology," which simply means that the symptoms your are experiencing are you body's best attempt to overcome a stressor in its environment. So, rather than suppress your symptoms, the functional medicine practitioner will work to evaluate what stressor in your environment is causing your illness and symptoms and then remove that stress.  

Consider that 85% of Type II diabetes is known to be reversible, and the New England Journal of Medicine sites that 75% of dollars spent on healthcare in the US is spent on chronic, preventable disease, like heart disease, diabetes and many forms of cancers. 

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), "People who smoke are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke." 

Also, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),radon causes about 20,000 cases of lung cancer each year, making it the second leading cause of lung cancer.

What these statistics mean is that, if we are going to talk about healing the body, then we must talked about your lifestyle and environment, two areas that most mainstream doctors will not ask you about, or have the time to ask you about. 

As one medical doctor said, "Good health makes a lot of sense, it just doesn't make much money." 

Now, maybe that is too skeptical and cynical, but the truth is that while diabetes is reversible and lung cancer is avoidable, most people think they are "unlucky" when they develop disease, rather than a participant in the disease. 

Maybe the most powerful difference between a functional medicine physician

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These are common everyday symptoms that patients come to our functional medicine physicians to fix.

and a regular physician is the philosophy by which they practice. 

If what you are looking for is a quick fix, such as drugs or surgery, then likely a functional medicine physician will not be your best option. And in fact, traditional forms of medicine may be a better option for you. But, if you want to keep all parts of your body, be healthier than you ever have been, and walk this road naturally, then a functional medicine physician may be your best choice. But, this road may take longer and require much more effort on your part than take this pill or that or simply showing up to appointments. Core to functional medicine philosophy is that you are a critical part of the healing process, because, it is very possible, that you are the one contributing to your illness. 

what to look for in a functional medicine physician

1. One thing that we'd recommend, after years of experience, is to find a practitioner with extensive, reliable testing to ensure a proper diagnosis and plan of action. 

There are many natural practitioners that do a lot of good work, but it can be defeating to feel like you are guessing at a problem, and therefore guessing at a solution. 

The first step in identifying a solution is to clearly identify a problem. This may sound obvious, but it seems that in the natural healing arts world there is a lot of intuition and assumption. 

At Thrive Health Systems, we test using stool, saliva, urine, blood and many other diagnostic tools. If we can't clearly identify a problem, then we will not guess at a solution. Not only can that be dangerous, but it can also try patients' patience, and often patience is key to the healing process. 

2. Just at the medical model encourages that you go to a primary care doctor before you move on to a specialist, we'd also recommend that a functional medicine doctor with a big and general vision of health is often a good first step, rather than a specialist in say, heavy metal toxicity, or something like that. 

The reason is that specialists can "forsake the forest for the trees." A specialist can tend to see everything as their specialty. In the example of a heavy metal toxicity specialist, everyone's problem tends to be heavy metal toxicity. 

3. Find a functional medicine physician who starts simple, before getting complex. Food allergies can be one of the greatest stessors on your body. Simple dietary changes have helped patients lose 20 lbs in three weeks, reduce bloating and/or constipation, and sleep soundly through the night. No matter how confusing your problem may seem to you, it may be a simple solution. Go to a functional medicine physician who starts with the simple things rather than, say, uber amounts of supplements.