What is Functional Health?

By: Nick Sienkiewicz, DPT, CSCS

What is Functional Health & What Determines "Normal"?

We’ve arrived at a weird time in the history of mankind. Our modern medical system creates a perspective where health is simply defined as the absence of disease and illness. Individuals strive for “normal” values on a variety of tests at their annual physicals, and when their personal data points fall within the range of what is considered normal (as to wether it is actually normal is a debate for many newsletters in the future…), they are given a clean bill of health. Then, when a value does fall outside the norm, a pharmaceutical drug is the first course of treatment in order to drive the number back into place. Although the drug will often effectively restore numerical balance, inevitably another test value will be manipulated, resulting in another pharmaceutical prescription. The hamster wheel just keeps on spinning… People continue to be told they are healthy according to modern standards, until they’re not. Drugs are used to reinstate modern health, and people carry on their way. Unfortunately, this system is short-sighted and paints an incomplete picture. It results in practitioners missing root causes of illness. People can partake in a variety of unhealthy behaviors that accrue over time to create disease, but be told in the meantime they have achieved modern health because of some good test scores!!

The reality is that there is no finish line for health. Giving people “a clean bill of health” is providing them with a false sense of security that allows them to believe they’ve reached some sort of finish line or checkpoint within the race of life. It tells you that you’ve survived another day. On the other hand, functional health is all about thriving!! It means striving for well balanced body systems that can fire on all cylinders. This requires you to behave in conjunction with the way the human body was meant to function naturally. When your body falls out of balance, you aim to bring it back to equilibrium by targeting the root causes of your health issues. It is normal to lose this balance from time to time. The key is recognize when your body is entering that unstable condition, so you can make appropriate changes to support it back to its grounded state, or what is known as homeostasis. This is the essence of functional health. You get to know your body, learning how it reacts and responds to everything internally and externally. You live functional health day in and day out!

So now I know what you’re thinking: “Okay Nick, enough with the babbling, tell me how to do it!!” I wish it were that simple. I refuse to give you some clickbait email that tells you: “This is the ONE secret to longevity.” We are complex animals and life is unpredictable. There are so many aspects to functional health. All are important, but some are more crucial for certain people, others are more pivotal at certain points in life, and these variables fluctuate for each individual over time. I understand this can be massively overwhelming, but the beautiful thing is that humans are so robust and adaptable that we DO NOT have to be perfect. We just have to strive to be a little bit better each and everyday. Yes, it takes work and effort to live a functionally healthy lifestyle, but it is so worth it to thrive rather than just survive during your time on this planet! Stay tuned for strategies to help make this happen!