Preventive medicine

What do preventative medicine physicians do?

They are the osteopathic, naturopathic and medical Doctors who've done extensive training in a more holistic preventative approach So they've either studied it in medical school or they've done continuing education or both. So there's institutes like IFM (The Institute of functional medicine) where they can do additional training in a more holistic and preventative approach.So there's three key aspects that differ in terms of the process so one is the intake. because they tend to spend a lot longer with their patients and get a more thorough health history and more information around the patient goals and concerns uh so if any kind of symptoms come up that might be early warning signs you that'll be more on their radar and then the second thing that differs is testing so they will often have more extensive testing with more sensitive ranges and different kinds of testing through blood work through saliva through stool. It can be gut testing genetic testing regular blood work and also metabolic path way sum they do different types of testing depending on the type of practitioner and depending on the patient concern. The third part that differs is there recommendations which tend to be more holistic they do generally require quite a bit of investment on the part of the patient in terms of time and effort in particular so they're a bit more comprehensive generally they can include diet supplements lifestyle sleep recommendations, movement recommendations and they'll cover a lot of bases to get the person to more of a homeostatic place so that they're less likely to develop chronic disease down the road. So overall preventative medicine physicians will focus a lot more on time and listening to Patient concerns and the the rapeutic relationship tends to be quite portant they'll also often do more extensive lab testing and look get more tight ranges and look for more specific sort of optimal ranges for labs. Not just red flags and then they also have a more comprehensive treatment plan generally speaking and overall they're focused and optimizing health and getting the patient more into a state of balance and picking up early warning signs both through the patient self-report and the objective data through Labs so that they can prevent disease before it develops.