Patients ask me what a functional medicine appointment is going to be like, and I think the question underneath it is usually “is this going to be another ten minutes and a prescription?”
The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy — the academy where I did my own certification — published a piece that answers it well, from the patient’s side rather than the practitioner’s. I am linking it here because it describes the experience more plainly than I tend to when I am explaining it in the room.
A few things in it match what I see in my own practice.
The appointment is longer, and that is the point. Most of what is useful comes out of the history — the sleep, the digestion, the stress, the things that get skipped because there was no time to mention them. You cannot find a pattern in ten minutes.
You are asked about your whole life, not just the complaint. Diet, movement, sleep, stress, the people around you. It can feel like a lot of questions about things that seem unrelated to why you came in. They are usually not unrelated.
You are expected to have opinions. A plan you cannot live with is not a plan. The article calls this becoming your own health advocate, and I would put it more simply: you know things about your life that I cannot know, and the plan is better when you say them.
The aim is to stop the next problem, not only to settle this one. Catching an imbalance early is easier than treating what it becomes.
If you are considering a functional medicine appointment and want to know what you would be walking into, it is worth ten minutes of your time.
Read it here: What Is It Like To Be A Functional Medicine Patient?
Kammerer, Ellen. “What Is It Like To Be A Functional Medicine Patient?” Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, 30 August 2023. https://functionalmedicinecoaching.org/blog/functional-medicine-patient/