Instructions:

· Find a research article in a peer reviewed source about a successful functional therapy. Summarize the article in this forum. Let us know:

What is the therapy?

How it is used?

Why it is viewed as being successful?

Any other pertinent information.

· Your summary should not be more than 200-250 words.

· Please scan the article, and attach it to your posting, so we can refer to it for further information.

· Please respond to at least 2 peers.

· Response must be 150-200 words.

· View rubric on how your posting will be graded.

Here are some websites that provide guidelines on summarizing research articles. You may want to review one or more of these before beginning this assignment.

· Writing Summaries (Columbia)

– Guidelines for writing an article summary (Andrews)

http://www.mercola.com

http://www.drperlmutter.com

Home

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684110/

This is the best I could find because I didn’t even have access to view this article.

Functional Medicine (FM) refers to biological approaches to disease treatment. FM is used by many practitioners including some Medical Doctors (MDs).

FM can be symptom focused or treat the bodies imbalances and dysfunctions to promote healing. FM practitioners believe that Conventional Medicine is treating just the tip of the iceberg (the symptoms) and not the underlying cause of the disease or dysfunction. FM Practitioners attempt to find and treat causes of disease. They use scientific principles, diagnostic tests, and treatment based on objective data. However, many approaches are considered controversial. For example, the biomedical treatment of autism is not supported by the American Academy of Medicine (AMA) even though it is practiced by MDs.

Vitamin D is a good example of FM research becoming mainstream medicine. FM practitioners have understood the crucial role of Vitamin D from sunlight for cardiovascular health and prevention of many diseases including cancer for 30 plus years. There is now a significant amount of scientific research to support the need for Vitamin D to prevent all cancers, to decrease cholesterol, and to decrease blood pressure. We now know that UVL turns cholesterol into Vitamin D hence decreasing cholesterol; dilates the blood vessels to decrease blood pressure; and works a hormonal antioxidant to prevent cancer.

Functional Medicine approaches include an array of techniques, procedures, tests, and treatments. It includes the use of nutrition and diets, including food sources and specific diets, to treat disease.

Some specific types of functional medicine are:

· Environmental medicine

· Enzyme therapy

· Fasting

· Flower remedies

· Herbs

· Hydrotherapy

· Juice therapy

· Naturopathic medicine

· Oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, and hyperbaric therapies

· Raw milk

· Aromatherapy

· Colon therapy

· Light therapy

· Cell therapy

· Chelation

· Detoxing

· Treatment of food allergies

A video is embedded in this lesson that cannot be watched without access to the schools library database or films on demand but the title is: Epigenetics: How Food Upsets Our Genes

By German United Distributors