Traditional forms of medicine were, by nature, holistic. But in the past century, conventional medicine has mainly focused on the physical aspects of illness, breaking the body up into parts to be dealt with in isolation by specialists who concentrate on disease and dysfunction. Their focus on disease—rather than health—has informed how medicine is practiced and patients are treated.
Integrative and functional medicine bring the focus back to patients and their health and healing. The surge in popularity of these modalities suggests that patients are drawn to this new (or very old) approach.
