At Tendwell, our Institute for Functional Medicine Certified practitioners take a root-cause, personalized approach. We also blend in Integrative medicine. You may be wondering what the differences are between the two approaches. While they are very similar, there are some differences. Taking as a case study, the general approach that might be taken to address perimenopause, this blog explains the similarities and differences in the two approaches.

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down to chat with Dr. Isabelle Amigues, an integrative rheumatologist here in Denver, CO. She and I bonded over collaborative care, past lives in New York City, raising kids in this complicated world and, of course, holistic approaches to patient care.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Kate Salama, an integrative psychiatrist practicing here in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Salama and I share similar views about how taking a holistic approach to health care is desperately needed in our modern, broken system. Functional medicine doctors and your Tendwell providers do a great job of treating the whole person to promote relief from chronic illness and improved well-being across many domains, physical as well as mental. But sometimes patients need a sharper and deeper focus on the mental and emotional aspects of health. In those cases your care team should include an integrative psychiatrist, like Dr. Salama.

If you’re thinking about adding functional health to your conventional or traditional health care, it’s great to know how integrative and functional health differ from conventional health.