Do you feel like you’re “stuck” with a health issue?
Have you been on and off medications and feel like you must “just accept” that chronic illness is a part of your life?
Are you searching for functional medicine near you in Tulsa, OK, because you’re sick and tired of the conventional healthcare system being unable to get you the answers you deserve?
At Functional Nutrition Sources, we understand. The founder of our functional medicine clinic near Tulsa was exposed to the broken “sick care” system, but she quickly found functional medicine after watching her mom go through a chronic illness. You can see Jennette’s founders story by clicking here.
Finding the right functional medicine practitioner in Tulsa is a crucial step in pursuing the health and vitality you deserve but that conventional medicine cannot deliver.
Why Conventional Medicine Wants to Keep You Sick
Our founder and primary functional medicine practitioner, Jennette Berry, realized that mainstream medicine was nothing more than a sick-care system when she was working as a hospital nurse. Most people go into healthcare driven by a desire to help others but quickly find themselves in an overloaded system, unable to provide patient support that gets to the root of health issues.
The reason for this is simple: despite the good intentions of doctors, nurses, and support personnel, insurance and pharmaceutical companies dominate the interests of “healthcare,” so you, the patient, get the short end of the stick.
Your Illness = Big Pharma Earnings
There are two countries in the world where it’s legal for pharmaceutical companies to run advertisements. One is New Zealand, and the other is the United States. In 2021 pharmaceutical companies spent $6.88 billion on advertising. Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies’ interests lie in answering to their shareholders and not the general population, which is increasingly becoming dependent on pharmaceuticals. Imagine what would happen to earnings if $6 billion were spent on educating the population on proper nutrition, supplementation, exercise, and lifestyle practices: more people would be healthy, but big pharma’s margins would suffer.
The Insurance Company Business Model
Insurance companies are the other reason conventional medicine has turned into a sick-care system – and why selecting a functional medicine practitioner near you is a good idea. Insurance companies make money by keeping as much of it as possible, and they’ve become increasingly stringent with what healthcare treatments they’ll approve for reimbursement.
This includes preventive care, making it difficult to run tests needed to determine what steps you could take today to prevent illness in the future. This puts insurance-based practitioners in a bind: they want to provide healthcare but will go out of business if they don’t follow the insurance company’s rules. Additionally, an “insurance-first” approach to healthcare forces a one-size-fits-all approach, when in reality every patient has nuanced needs.
Functional Medicine: A Different Approach to Healing
Functional medicine focuses on the patient as an individual, seeking the root cause of every patient’s illness. Additionally, functional medicine practitioners take a holistic approach to patient care. That means in addition to your physical symptoms, functional medicine practitioners near you want to know about your stress levels, lifestyle, and other factors that affect your health. For example, you may be asked about nutrition choices, quality of relationships, and satisfaction with your career – just to name a few.
While functional medicine incorporates the modern advancements of today’s medicine, it also utilizes holistic and natural treatment strategies. Some treatments that a functional medicine practitioner near you might use include the following:
- Diet & Nutrition: The food you eat profoundly impacts your health, and many prevalent health issues are related to an epidemic of poor nutrition.
- Lifestyle Modification: Moving your body, managing your stress, and building a fulfilling life can drastically change the quality of your health.
- Supplements: Through advanced testing, functional medicine practitioners can identify any need for supplementation instead of going directly to pharmaceuticals.
Benefits Of Functional Medicine
If conventional medicine has left you feeling stuck or like you should “just accept” chronic pain, autoimmune diseases, unhealthy weight, pervasive fatigue, digestive issues, or metabolic problems, it’s time to change to functional medicine.
There are many benefits of functional medicine near you, including the following:
- An individualized approach to treatments
- Preventive healthcare
- Ongoing support and coaching (depending on the clinic)
- Root-cause healing so you can minimize or eliminate your health issues
- Increased overall wellness
Selecting A Functional Medicine Practitioner Near You
Most functional medicine clinics offer free consultations so you can get to know more about their process, treatment specialties, and approach. This helps you know whether you’re making the best selection for your health goals. When you call functional medicine offices near you, make sure you know what goals you’d like to achieve by starting treatments with them.
For example, if you’d like to treat an autoimmune illness, you can ask what kind of experience they have and their patient outcomes. For example, at our functional medicine clinic, we have five areas of focus:
- Digestive Problems
- Autoimmune Diseases
- Metabolic Syndromes
- Thyroid
- Chronic Stress
