Preventing Disease and Maximizing Health with Functional Medicine
Western medicine tends to be a little less personal than Functional Medicine, addressing symptoms and diseases and focused on alleviating and treating these things as separate entities. Functional Medicine, on the other hand, focuses the patient as a whole. It is patient-centered rather than ailment-centered. Practitioners spend more time with their patients, learning about their lifestyle and personal history and delving into genetic and environmental factors. Functional Medicine also differs from Western in that it is directed toward the underlying causes of disease – in essence, preventing a spark from becoming a flame as opposed to stepping in with a fire hose after the fire has already started.
The value of this approach is underscored by the fact that more and more research points to chronic inflammation as the common factor in a number of serious diseases and conditions. In an article discussing the Unifying Theory of the cause of disease, the Harvard Health Letter notes, “All of us adults have some level of chronic inflammation slowly waging a war of attrition on tissues and organs, its activity often evidenced only in blood tests. But if it’s turned up a notch or two, chronic inflammation can wear away at the body so that the damage is devastating.” It also states that mounting evidence suggests inflammation is “a common underlying cause of major degenerative diseases.” Functional Medicine’s focus on all components factoring into a patient’s health, including lifestyle, diet, and environment, proactively addresses the issue of inflammation, drastically reducing the factors that contribute to it.
Dr. Mylaine Riobe’s personal journey to providing integrative, Functional Medicine, rather than just the traditional Western medicine she was trained in, actually began when she was a young child learning holistic healing methods from her grandmother. The appeal of a holistic approach stayed with her all the way through medical school and the first four years of her OB-GYN practice following her graduation and board certification. Dr. Riobe became increasingly frustrated with the one-size-fits-all concept of conventional medical practices. She turned to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Functional Medicine, integrating them with her Western education and experience.
Dr. Riobe incorporates these disciplines into her practice to provide an integrative, customized approach combining leading-edge modern medical testing and technology with time-tested energy-based methods of TCM, and the patient-directed, proactive approach of Functional Medicine. Providing personalized, bespoke healthcare to patients is her passion, and the Riobe Institute of Integrative Medicine is where it all happens!
Would you like to know more about what an integrative approach to healthcare can do for your health and well-being? Contact us – we’d love to speak to you! 772.266.4258 or Info@RiobeIntegrativeMedicine.com.
Click here to read the full Harvard Health Letter article.
You can read more about Dr. Riobe’s professional journey here.
