Welcome to Ritual Functional Medicine {the blog}

Hello and welcome to the Ritual Functional Medicine blog!

I have been cultivating this space in my mind for a long time. It finally occurred to me that we can dream something into just short of reality, well, forever. No more. It is time to normalize this language of wellness.

I am very excited to have you here and look forward to sharing information about health and wellbeing through the lense of a functional medicine provider.

I hear the wheels turning...what is functional medicine? Functional medicine is a systems biology approach to optimizing health. Let’s break that down…

Looking at all of the systems in the body together and how they interact is far superior to the typical reductionist approach in “health”care of separating things into “specialties” that don’t communicate with each other. The GI doc does not know what the allergist is doing with you who also doesn’t know how the endocrinologist is approaching things or what the rheumatologist is thinking, and the PCP (primary care provider) is just over there doing a pap smear each year and talking about how you need to lose weight...and lower your cholesterol...and improve your blood sugar. How???? Just eat less and exercise. And come back in a year. To be told the same thing again. Sound familiar? Yeah, I know.

Really?!? This is why we shell out for insurance each month? I could go on. And on and on.

Even if you don’t have any medical diagnoses, you may feel tired everyday, have trouble prying yourself out of bed, feel like your libido is playing hide-and-seek and has found the BEST hiding spot, feel downright gross after eating certain things...or anything, feel down and blue even though on paper, life should be great.

Or you have been trying to get pregnant and things don’t seem to be working.

Or you never know when your period is coming...or it never seems to go away.

Or menopause has left you unable to sleep, dripping in sweat, and flat out not like yourself.

Or you get migraines and are getting pretty tired of them popping up at the worst possible times {is there ever a good time to get a migraine?}.

Your body aches and nothing ever comes back positive on tests, but you know you hurt. Sound familiar?

Well, remember {part 2} from above: optimizing health? That mystical unicorn concept? That is why I am here. My mission is to help people thrive by finding and addressing the root cause(s). To remember what it feels like to be yourself and find your way back, while moving forward to an even better version of you. That is what a real, comprehensive functional medicine approach is all about. And that is what I get to do for my job {how cool is that?}.

OK. So now you know that functional medicine finds and addresses the root cause of your symptoms. What a relief to know there is care like this out there. But what it is like to see a functional medicine provider? I will be talking about this in my next blog post. Spoiler alert: it is not like any doctor visit you’ve had before.

Want more details about functional medicine from “headquarters”?

The Institute for Functional Medicine

This blog pro­vides gen­eral infor­ma­tion and dis­cus­sion about med­i­cine, health, and related sub­jects. The words and other con­tent pro­vided in this blog, and in any linked mate­ri­als, are not intended and should not be con­strued as med­ical advice. If the reader or any other per­son has a med­ical con­cern, he or she should con­sult with an appropriately-licensed healthcare provider. This blog or any content on this site does not establish a patient-provider relationship with Dr. Meredith Rusthoven.