“integrative” and “functional” doctors: MDs who use Western medicine along with alternative practices. Usually, they aim to treat the patient as a whole person, seeking to unearth the complex root causes of an illness rather than offer a quick local fix. Integrative and functional medicine also aim to treat the body before it becomes pathologically ill, supporting it by instituting practices of self-care around nutrition, sleep, and stress, restoring the body to higher function, as it were.
