Integrative medicine refers to healthcare that takes into account all suitable therapeutic approaches, regardless of whether they originate from conventional or complementary medicine. As in our practice, the focus here is on health, the therapeutic context and the patient as a whole.
This is the difference to purely functional medicine, which attempts to identify and treat the underlying cause of your condition.
Ideally, however, integrative medicine and functional medicine are combined. This further optimises and increases the therapeutic effect.
This combination has been used in our practice for years.
In addition to better tolerability for and acceptance by patients, the advantages include the avoidance of unnecessary investigations (imaging, laboratory) and therapies, in particular through cooperation and exchange with other medical specialities and service providers in coordination with the GPs as a central point of contact.
This represents a genuine further development and improvement of the familiar interdisciplinary co-operation.
It also strengthens patients’ motivation to actively participate in their own recovery, be it with medical training therapy such as aqua aerobics or crawl swimming, but also Nordic walking and yoga/quigong.
Especially in orthopaedics and pain therapy, promoting the urge to move is very important for the function of the musculoskeletal system, but also for psychological and mental health.
The diagnostic and therapeutic measures of integrative medicine should therefore be seen as a trigger for patient-orientated and patient-led medicine.