What is Functional Medicine?

Most people think going to the doctor once a year, getting a few labs, and hearing “you’re fine” means they’re healthy. But our belief is waiting on a diagnosis to start taking your health seriously isn’t really healthcare, it’s damage control.

That’s why at 91WhiskeyRX, we practice functional medicine, and it’s changing the very definition of what it means to take control of your health. If you’re considering your own functional health journey, it’s important to take a look at how the current system works. In traditional healthcare, the model is simple: identify disease, then treat it. 

For example, say you’re suffering from fatigue, and blurred vision. These symptoms are enough for you to schedule an appointment with your primary care doctor. They run some standard bloodwork and maybe throw in an A1C test, used to check for diabetes. 

Then you wait. First, 7 to 10 days for your labs to come back. You get a phone call from a nurse who tells you something came back abnormal, and you need to schedule a follow-up appointment. The earliest you can get in? Probably another 10 to 14 days. 

When you finally sit down for that appointment, you might hear that your A1C is elevated and it looks like you have pre-diabetes. You won’t get much explanation, just a prescription sent over to CVS. There’ll be no real conversation about how long you’ll need the medication, what it’s doing, or how to get off of it. 

If your A1C is trending high but not quite high enough for medication, your doctor will tell you they’ll “keep an eye on it.” 

You might feel relieved at that moment, but really, what your doctor is saying is, “let’s wait for this to get worse before we actually do anything.” Afterward, you’ll likely carry on without changing anything in your lifestyle, your symptoms will increase until your A1C hits the charts high enough for that prescription. 

Either way, you’re sent home with the same symptoms you showed up with, almost no new insight and usually a bill between $500 - $1,000.

That’s where functional medicine and the 91WhiskeyRX method is different. We don’t just sit back and wait. We ask better questions, look at your body as a whole system, and we get to work before things start breaking down. 

When you come to us and share that you’re experiencing unexplained weight loss, that fatigue, and blurred vision, we’re taking a more holistic approach instead of just considering that A1C blood test. 

First, we’ll run our full blood panel. When the results are in, we’ll take a close look at it and schedule a call where we’ll talk through your lifestyle, biomarkers, nutrition, inflammation, stress, sleep, hormones, all of it.

We do that because instead of asking ourselves “What drug fixes this?,” we’re asking “Why is this happening in the first place, and how do we fix it at the root?” We’ll work with you to develop a customized nutrition, workout, and lifestyle plan to address these issues and hopefully resolve that high A1C, before we just throw you on a prescription. Because that’s what it takes to stop disease before it starts.

We’ve seen what happens when the system waits too long, and we’re not here to play defense. Functional medicine has standards. It’s prevention with a purpose, and it’s built for people who want to perform, not just survive.