Telling a Bigger Story - Employing the narrative power of Functional Medicine for broader change

Functional Medicine is popular.  Its ‘brand slogan’, because YES, it is a brand,  is often summarized as  “Root-Cause Medicine’.’ It promises to get to the foundational roots of your health concerns rather than just minimize or control symptoms.  Functional medicine is an approach that embraces biological complexity, where practitioners seek to understand the interconnections between various symptoms, dis-ease states, and functional imbalances and provide personalized, actionable recommendations to help individuals (that emphasis is intentional) reverse disease and achieve ‘optimal health’.  I have problems with the phrase optimal health -  but that is an essay for another time.

The questions for today are:

What is missed with functional medicine’s focus on health transformation through individual actions and responsibility? 

How might a social, cultural, ecological, and political analysis be combined with the narrative power of functional medicine to yield a more sustainable and transformative approach to care?

Narrative Power, what do I mean by this?

One of the reasons for Functional Medicine’s appeal is that it tells a better story. Better than whose story you ask? Better than the typical story in a Western medicine organ-based disease framework. In this framework, the endometriosis, fatty liver disease, and acne you are dealing with are not understood to have anything to do with one another.  They are separate conditions needing separate treatments. 

Functional medicine provides an answer, a story (if you will)  of interconnection and relatedness, an affirmation that YES, your headaches, constipation, insomnia, and heart palpitations may indeed have some relationship to one another. AND that instead of just taking different medications for their symptomatic relief of each, we can pursue a path that may bring relief and potential resolution to the imbalances that are contributing to all of these conditions.  Intriguing. Compelling. As I said, its a better story.  

(It is worth noting that the story that functional medicine tells is limited as well. It is often mute on the non-physical aspects of healing. I wrote about this here.)

I have had many patients say to me - “Wow, I knew there was a relationship between X and Y”.

They feel affirmed and they often feel more motivated. The story helps them to think about navigating the challenging territory between where they currently are and the vision they have for their health and well-being and where they would like to be.  

A story is a map that helps to navigate this distance. 

But as I noted,  too often, this is a map that is just drawn for one person or possibly for one family. Health as individual responsibility, individual investment, and resource. 

What would it mean for functional medicine to start to map this territory on a larger scale? To tell and share the story as widely as possible with explicit political goals? And to advocate for radical (radical from the Latin radix meaning root) change?

How might we expand the work done by the Functional Medicine Model, applying its system and analysis not just to the complex stories of the antecedents, triggers, and mediators of individual disease but to the story of societal dis-ease and dysregulation?  To tell a motivating story that activates and inspires action...

What might this look like? Is it possible?

I will continue to share my evolving thoughts on this topic in the coming weeks. 

What are your thoughts?

Yours in healing and solidarity,

Nicole Winbush, M.D.

Dr. Winbush founded Sankofa Healing Arts & Functional Medicine, an interdisciplinary healing practice based in North Carolina. Through this practice and aligned partnerships, Dr. Winbush seeks to support others in their goals for their health and well-being and doing so in ways that are easeful, ecological, and enduring.  You can follow her at @sankofahealing on Instagram.