Episode 2
Understanding Integrative, Functional, and Genomic Medicine for Optimal Health
Functional medicine is much more of a root cause, biological kind of focus on disease.
What is Integrative Medicine?
Integrative medicine focuses on combining multiple healing modalities to address health concerns comprehensively. This includes chiropractic care, traditional Chinese medicine, functional medicine, homeopathy, clinical hypnotherapy, and even conventional medical practices. The goal is to integrate diverse approaches to tackle health issues holistically—essentially weaving together various systems of healing for the best patient outcomes.
How Does Functional Medicine Differ?
Functional medicine takes a more targeted, root-cause approach by examining disease at a cellular and biochemical level. It seeks to understand how disease manifests and progresses by focusing on the underlying biology of the condition. This method allows clinicians to identify imbalances in the body and address them early, often before symptoms become pronounced.
Dr. Julie Chen, an expert in integrative medicine, emphasizes the importance of combining functional medicine with broader practices. “If we’re looking at disease, we need to see both a macrocosm and microcosm of what’s happening—understanding the big picture as well as what’s occurring at the cellular level,” she explains.
The Circular Loop of Optimizing Health
Dr. Chen describes a “circular loop” approach where health data is constantly reviewed and updated. This iterative process starts with genomic insights, progresses to cellular analysis, and extends to imaging and biomarkers. Feedback from each level is used to refine and optimize patient care. By continually reassessing and integrating new data, this method ensures health solutions evolve as the patient’s needs change.
The Role of Genomics in Personalized Care
Genomics, the study of an individual’s genetic blueprint, adds a new dimension to personalized healthcare. By analyzing DNA, practitioners can identify genetic predispositions to certain diseases and take preventative measures long before symptoms arise. “Genomics allows us to start with the foundation—your blueprint—and look at what disease risks you’re predisposed to,” Dr. Chen notes.
When genomics is combined with functional medicine and integrative practices, the result is a highly personalized, data-driven approach to health optimization. Practitioners can monitor biomarkers, organ function, and even subtle shifts in functionality over time to predict and mitigate risks. For example, the early detection of dementia risks through genetic analysis can prompt preventative interventions in diet, exercise, and stress management to slow or halt disease progression.
Why Integration is Key
Ultimately, integrative medicine is about pulling together multiple tools—genomics, functional insights, lifestyle adjustments, and more—into a cohesive strategy. “It’s not just about genetics or one isolated solution,” Dr. Chen explains. “You need to integrate diagnostics and solutions to form a whole-systems approach to health.”
For example, addressing dementia risk involves more than just tracking brain volume changes. Functional changes often appear earlier than physical ones, making it essential to combine diagnostics with actionable interventions like stress reduction, diet optimization, and consistent exercise routines.
The combined power of integrative, functional, and genomic medicine offers a revolutionary approach to health care. It moves beyond symptom management and emphasizes proactive, data-driven strategies to optimize health. By addressing the big picture and the smallest details simultaneously, practitioners can empower individuals to live healthier, longer lives.
Transcript
00:01
Dafne Canales
And then for our listeners out there, I want, I. We need a little bit of a definition, so we need to define in functional medicine, integrative medicine, genomics. Can you, can you give us a little dictionary thing there?
00:13
Dr. Julie Chen
Sure, of course. Integrative medicine is, if you really think about the words, just integrating, it’s integrating all the modalities of medicine. So what’s interesting and the difference between integrative and functional is integrative is a little bit wider net of using things like chiropractic, traditional Chinese medicine, functional medicine, homeopathy, even like clinical hypnotherapy like, and conventional medicine. It’s integrating all forms of healing and modalities to really address health concerns. That’s literally what integrative medicine is, integrating all of the mentalities. Functional medicine is much more of a root cause, biological kind of focus on disease.
00:52
Dr. Julie Chen
And I actually am a big supporter and believer in functional medicine in the sense that I think if we’re looking broadly at disease states, we do need to see both a global, more of a macrocosm of disease as well as the microcosm and for us to really understand where it’s coming from and how the cells and the biochemical pathways are occurring. For something to occur, it’s important for us. And now that there’s more and more studies about it really does allow us to put it all together and start at more of a cellular level. Now what’s interesting is that if you combine things like functional medicine and then genomic medicine, so genomics is looking at our blueprint, our DNA of what makes us, and also what disease states are based on inherency of our DNA, what we’re predisposed to.
01:42
Dr. Julie Chen
So if you look at the spectrum of our health, if we’re able to, which is what human longevity does, start from the beginning of someone’s blueprint and then look at their predispositions, then start to look at the cellular level of what needs to be optimized, then look at the imaging level and the biomarker level of where they’re at right now. And then put that all together, more of a circular loop of saying, okay, here’s our genomics, what are your predispositions? How can we fix that? What are we finding right now? And then we take the data and recheck it over and over. And that’s ultimately what leads us to a data driven circular pattern of constantly feeding back into the info so that we can continue to move someone’s health forward, to optimize it. That’s ultimately what we’re looking for. Right. So integrative medicine.
02:28
Dr. Julie Chen
Then at the other end of it is again this integration of genomics, functional medicine, diet, lifestyle, exercise, risk factors that are identified now versus future risk factors. A lot of what we do, for example, we can even identify dementia risks far in advance and then also track the organ changes over time and as well as the functional changes over time. Because as you know, you might see shrinkage of the brain, but you also sometimes maybe it’s so early on that you don’t see any volume change in the brain, but their functionality is changing. So there’s so many factors that you do have to integrate together, both to identify their issues, but also to integrate together so that you can have a comprehensive whole systems approach to help.
03:09
Dr. Julie Chen
So whether it’s, you know, dementia risk both on the diet and exercise and the stress level end, because that will impact your sleep and exercise and all of that. So it’s integrating solutions, but also integrating the diagnostic status to figure out where your health is right now.
03:23
Dafne Canales
Right. And, and one of the things that, because you’re talking about a whole system, it’s not just there’s so many, you know, books out there and different podcasts, and it’s not just about just doing genetics or just doing something. It’s about taking, like you’re saying, that integrated approach to health and figuring that.
