Modern nutrition science likes to pretend it simplifies the age-old question of what’s for dinner. In fact, most of us are more confused than ever. If you’re tired of struggling to wade through conflicting advice on optimal nutrition plans, it’s time to embrace a different framework—functional nutrition.
But what is functional nutrition? And how can you put it into practice? The answer may not be as complicated as you think.
What is Functional Nutrition?
Functional nutrition is the practice of considering every aspect of health, nutrition, and overall lifestyle when making nutritional recommendations. It fits with the ideologies of functional medicine.
Functional medicine takes an approach to health care that takes into account how interconnected each part of the body is. This strategy seeks to address the big picture of health by restoring normal function.
With functional nutrition, symptoms are considered clues to managing your primary health problems, whether related to diet, disease, medications, lifestyle factors, toxin exposure, antibiotic use, or other factors.
While standard healthcare will attempt to suppress these symptoms with medication, functional nutrition and functional medicine see them as clues to understanding underlying issues within the body. Considering the effects of seemingly unrelated factors on health, functional nutritionists will put together a holistic health plan that takes into account every aspect of health.
For these reasons, functional nutrition is never one-size-fits-all. Instead, it is a highly customizable holistic health perspective that takes your unique situation into account to support healing from a cellular level.
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Functional Medicine vs. Functional Nutrition
While the terms “functional medicine” and “functional nutrition” are often used interchangeably, they are not technically the same. Functional medicine is a broad medical approach that treats health problems as part of the body’s entire interconnected system. Functional nutrition takes this perspective a step further, highlighting the ways in which food is a fundamental component of health. Functional nutrition focuses on eating habits, but also considers other components of health and whether food may be part of the root cause.
The Functional Nutrition Process
Clients come to health professionals with a variety of concerns, including inflammation and chronic disease.
In most cases, a functional nutrition approach requires practitioners to follow a series of steps to determine which dietary changes will best benefit their client. Although these steps tend to vary significantly, they typically include the following:
- Complete evaluation of past medical history
- Review of organ systems
- Drug and supplement history review
- Review of current eating and lifestyle habits
- Review of past medical tests and results
- Nutrient testing to measure possible deficiencies
With these results, a functional nutritionist will work to develop a customized program that targets the root cause of their client’s health problems. Program options may include suggestions for dietary changes, such as eliminating highly processed foods or entire food groups such as gluten or dairy. Sometimes a supplement is recommended to improve digestion or encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria. Other times they will teach their clients how to manage lifestyle factors, such as learning how to handle stress or better manage their nervous system impulses.
In other words, diagnosing, prescribing, or treating their patients for specific conditions is usually outside the scope of a functional nutrition practitioner. Instead, their role is to look at all health problems with a holistic approach, educate patients about the ways in which their behavior is hindering their optimal health, and offer suggestions for improvement.
How to Follow a Functional Nutrition Nutritional Strategy
Contrary to popular opinion, there is no single functional nutrition diet. Instead, the right nutritional strategy for you is one designed to address your specific health concerns.
Even so, some general assumptions apply to almost anyone who wants to eat in a way that supports their body. The following principles describe what functional nutrition might look like for you on a personal level.
The five basic principles for following a functional nutrition plan include:
Replenish essential nutrients
The ingredients in your food are the building blocks of your entire body. Nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, amino acids, essential fatty acids, probiotics and complex carbohydrates are vital to keeping your body functioning properly. By feeding it what it needs daily, you set your system up for a state of health.
Avoid toxic growing conditions
In today’s world, it’s more important than ever to understand exactly what’s in your food. Factory farmed animal products, GMO crops and products laced with pesticides They all fill your digestive system with substances that people weren’t exposed to even 80 years ago, and the effects on your health can be extreme. Be sure to source your food from places you can trust to ensure that every bite contains exactly what you expect and nothing more.
Stick with quality food
Just like the quality of the gas in your car makes a difference in how well it drives, the ingredients in your food dictate how well your body will function. Filling up on heavily processed foods will prevent you from absorbing all the nutrients you need, potentially compromising your system.
Prioritize gut health
Hippocrates told us that health begins and ends in the gut, and eating the most nutritious diet in the world won’t do you any good if your digestive system isn’t ready to process it. Over 80 percent of your immune system is located in the gut, and without it functioning properly you’re at risk for infections, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, and hormonal imbalances, many of which can be misdiagnosed as other conditions.
Taking care of your gut requires keeping it healthy with beneficial bacteria and preventing pathogens and undigested food from causing problems. Make sure you know the signs of leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome and other conditions so you can tell when something has fallen into place.
Tend to your microbiome
Healthy digestion doesn’t happen without a strong supply of beneficial microbes in your stomach and intestines. In fact, the human intestine contains ten times more bacteria of all the cells that make up your body.
These bacteria are collectively called the microbiome and are responsible for a myriad of health processes that affect your immune system, mental health, memory formation and your risk of developing chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease. Making sure you eat foods full of probiotics will help your microbial levels stay high, which will help your immune system function as it should.
Start a dialogue about your diet with functional nutrition
Let’s summarize: why is functional nutrition so powerful? It allows you to use food to support your body and set it up for optimal health. By realigning your relationship with food and thinking about the ways in which every aspect of your physical and emotional life is interconnected, you can shift your entire food paradigm to make it easier to make healthy choices.
How do healthcare professionals determine which functional nutrition nutritional strategy makes the most sense for their clients? Most use a “functional medicine matrix” to consider how a client’s health history, lifestyle choices, and current diet may be contributing to their health concerns.
It generally emphasizes how vital it is for you to get a variety of foods as opposed to a range of ‘food items’. Functional nutritionists generally recommend eating a nutrient-dense, whole-food diet that contains minimally processed ingredients.
Keep in mind that a functional nutrition diet is not an isolated event. It’s a dynamic process where you’ll be constantly experimenting with your diet and lifestyle and tweaking variables until you find what works for you. Success comes from listening to your body and knowing how it responds to different factors so you can constantly support it.
This level of ongoing dialogue is not always available in the modern healthcare system, which is why seeking the advice of a functional nutrition expert is so beneficial to your health journey.
Functional Nutrition: The Healthcare of the Future for Optimal Health
Holistic thinking is gaining ground in the medical world, and the trend shows little sign of slowing down. Functional nutrition provides answers to some of today’s most important health problems. The principle of holistically looking at individual health concerns can make all the difference in your overall health and quality of life.
By taking the time to learn more about this paradigm shift, you can begin to support your body with nutrition and pursue optimal health.
Get your free guide to becoming a holistic nutritionist
Learn about the important role of holistic nutritionists, what it takes to be successful as one, and how to build a profitable career in nutrition.
