What is Functional Nutrition?

This is the question I get asked the most. What’s the difference between functional nutrition and a regular conventional nutritionist?

The main distinctions are that functional nutrition takes a root cause approach meaning that it aims to understand the root cause of different symptoms and dis-eases, as apposed to just managing symptoms or conditions. For example; for someone who may be experiencing digestive concerns like bloating, gas or food intolerances, instead of simply giving this person a diet which omits those foods which are causing distress we would look at what is happening in the guts to cause the person to have gas, bloating or intolerances - it may be dysbiosis (imbalanced gut bacteria) or insufficient gastric acid leading to food not being properly digested leading to fermentation and gaseous byproducts. We would then address this (often in conjunction with a period of reducing the offending foods) using different therapeutic foods, supplementation and lifestyle habits.

Functional nutrition works to restore function to the organs and systems of the body to allows the body’s own innate capacity to heal and resolve. There is no one size fits all. A deep analysis of each clients intake paperwork is done, with each protocol and nutritional recommendation tailored based on a persons unique biology, health history, ancestry, lifestyle and goals.

In addition FNTPs hold a unique clinical skillset known as the Functional Clinical Assessment (FCA) which is a physical body evaluation using various palpations and tests on the body to assess for inflammation or dysfunction. From here supplements and foods can be tested to find the necessary support.

Learn more on this blog post here - The 6 Foundations Of Functional Nutrition