Functional Medicine Essay Paper

Functional Medicine Essay Paper Functional Medicine Essay Paper Edited Essay My reticence regarding traditional medicine does not result from want of experience–indeed, I have spent so much time in hospitals during my life that I am all too familiar with traditional treatments. Born with various congenital defects, my life has been a blur of cardiac, thoracic, and gastrointestinal surgeries, and by the age of five, I was as familiar with taking medication as I was with eating cornflakes.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Without denying the substantial benefits I have derived from my treatments, I nonetheless believe that the maintenance of health depends as much upon the promotion of wellness as it does upon the combating of disease. This is a lesson I have learned from my paternal grandparents. Considerably older than my maternal grandparents, my father’s parents always seemed youthful and vigorous. They exercised regularly, ate a balanced diet, used alternative therapies, and had a great deal of joy in their lives. By contrast, my maternal grandparents seemed driven by an almost morbid obsession with disease. Although they sought aggressive Western medical treatments, my maternal grandparents ultimately passed on fifteen years ago, while my paternal set are still leading healthy lives into their nineties.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Permalink: https://nursingpaperessays.com/ functional-medicine-essay-paper / ? Since my mother raised me, her beliefs dictated my own health care treatments. We did not consider any alternative therapies to help with my childhood illnesses; all the relief I received came with a prescription. When I went to college and became ill again, I decided that it was time for me to try something new. I turned to my paternal grandparents for advice, asking my grandmother about herbal treatments, nutrition, and lifestyle. She encouraged me to read more about oriental medicine and look beyond my symptoms to the deeper root causes of my illness. Eventually, through a combination of herbal supplements and dietary and lifestyle changes, I was able to wean myself from a diet of prescriptions and gradually find balance in my health.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Unfortunately, such knowledge did not come to my mother. A few years after my medical epiphany, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology. Despite my urging that she investigate wellness-based treatment, my mother reacted to her illness in the same way her parents had reacted to theirs: by ignoring it. A few more years passed, and she developed fibromyalgia. Diagnosed with the same unknown autoimmune disease, my mother’s sisters found relief in acupuncture and yoga, but my mother turned to surgery to treat her pain. Unfortunately, surgery could not ease her suffering, and my mother still experienced far more discomfort than her sisters.Functional Medicine Essay Paper While I recognize that anecdotal data is by definition inconclusive, I nonetheless have enough personal and familial experience with illness to be a firm believer in the power of alternative therapies to dramatically improve people’s lives. Traditional Western medicine certainly has its place, but an individual’s role in actively managing his or her own health cannot be denied. Health is not something that can be taken for granted, and for me, the responsibility of maintaining health reaches beyond caring for myself. Over the past two years, I have faced the toughest test of my convictions by caring for a dear friend who suffers with HIV. Spending many hours by his side, I have seen how the combination of oriental medicine with traditional Western pharmaceuticals has worked wonders in helping him maintain his vitality. Spending time with him in the hospital, I have massaged his muscles to relieve myalgias and provided him with the moral support that is crucial to effective recovery. This experience has solidified my interest in alternative treatments, and I cannot imagine a more fulfilling and compassionate way to spend my life than by promoting the wellness of others.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Customer’s Comments “EssayEdge is wonderful! My editor’s responses to my e-mails were prompt and incredibly thorough. Her edits added much color and a great flow to my essay. I loved the way she articulated my ideas so masterfully. She is a gifted editor. I am definitely going to seek her services as I work on my secondaries.”Functional Medicine Essay Paper Critique Dear Jane, I read your essay with great interest. It is clear that you have experienced a great deal and that you have developed unique insights into health and illness. Despite the concern you expressed about your lack of experience with alternative treatments, I feel that you have something that is much more important–the insight and wisdom that will allow you to become a compassionate healer. Your essay was quite good. The most important changes I made were tightening up your language, removing unnecessary passages, and restructuring your essay to improve its flow. Employing a chronological structure in your essay helps the reader understand the evolution of your ideas.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Overall, my editing sought to refine your descriptions in order to make your essay even more captivating and convincing. In general, I maintained the basic structure of your paragraphs but made many changes at the sentence level. I rephrased some parts that sounded awkward, varied vocabulary, corrected spelling mistakes, adjusted sentence structure and punctuation, and shortened some of your passages. The following are specific comments on the individual paragraphs of your essay: Paragraph 1 This is the most important paragraph of the piece. It sets the tone and hooks the reader’s interest. Your original first paragraph alluded to your work experience, juxtaposing the effectiveness of Western and alternative medicine. This is a fine approach, but you have a much more compelling detail–the story of your own illness–that could illustrate your point much more effectively. Here is my suggestion for an alternative introduction:Functional Medicine Essay Paper “My reticence regarding traditional medicine does not result from want of experience–indeed, I have spent so much time in hospitals during my life that I am all too familiar with traditional treatments. Born with various congenital defects, my life has been a blur of cardiac, thoracic, and gastrointestinal surgeries, and by the age of five, I was as familiar with taking medication as I was with eating cornflakes.” This new introduction is short and concise, but also quite compelling. Also, please note that very specific details engage the reader and secure his interest. For instance, you should try to avoid excessively general sentences like, “Much of my early life was spent in hospitals and while the operations I underwent corrected various congenital defects; I was constantly ill.”Functional Medicine Essay Paper What congenital defects did you have? Your readers will be interested in knowing this detail, particularly if your defects belong to a known syndrome. What surgeries did you have? I guessed cardiac, thoracic, and GI surgeries since these are common surgeries for congenital abnormalities. Please be sure to replace these details with surgeries that apply to you. The rest of the original first paragraph contained information that you dealt with later, so I omitted this information in order to avoid redundancy. Paragraph 2 I integrated the details of this paragraph into the revised introduction. In an essay this short, it is not necessary to devote entire paragraphs to transitions. See how I have streamlined your ideas to transition more rapidly between the first and second paragraphs.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Paragraphs 3 & 4 I combined these two paragraphs since the latter serves as a powerful introduction to the former. Be sure to avoid repetitive sentences in your writing. For instance, the following two sentences are redundant: “It became clear to me that I needed to look beyond symptoms. I needed to work backwards to get to the possible root causes.” Instead of repeating the phrase, “I needed,” I instead collapsed this sentence to: “She encouraged me to read more about oriental medicine and look beyond my symptoms to the deeper root causes of my illness.” Paragraph 5 This paragraph was generally effective, but it required a few essential adjustments. In describing your mother’s diagnosis with an autoimmune disease, you cannot accurately say that she “faced her own mortality” unless you give more detail. People usually face their own mortality in car accidents or when confronted with life-threatening illnesses. You do not give the reader enough detail to understand why your mother’s autoimmune disease was so threatening, especially since you say that her health became worse when she developed fibromyalgia. This disease, while debilitating, is certainly not life-threatening.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Another nit-picky point: do not use quotations in formal essays unless you are directly quoting someone’s speech. Also, the medical term would be unknown “etiology,” not “pathology” (you would use pathology to describe a tissue biopsy, not a medical diagnosis). This is not a big deal, but it is good to be accurate. The rest of this paragraph was great. You built a terrific case for alternative therapies and for your decision to pursue a career in this type of healing. In sum, I tightened up this paragraph so that it now reads: “Unfortunately, such knowledge did not come to my mother. A few years after my medical epiphany, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology. Despite my urging that she investigate wellness-based treatment, my mother reacted to her illness in the same way her parents had reacted toward theirs: by ignoring it. A few more years passed, and she developed fibromyalgia. Diagnosed with the same unknown autoimmune disease, my mother’s sisters found relief in acupuncture and yoga, but my mother turned to surgery to treat her pain. Unfortunately, not even surgery could ease her suffering, and my mother still experienced far more discomfort than her sisters.”Functional Medicine Essay Paper Paragraph 6 I suggested some important conceptual changes to this paragraph. While you make a great case for the value of alternative therapies, you should not discount the worth of traditional medicine altogether. Instead, I suggest showing how your interest in alternative therapies is predicated upon the assumption that there is a proper time and place for each type of treatment. See my suggestions in the text. Paragraph 7 You chose a great way to end your piece. This is the second most important paragraph in the essay because it is the last thing the reader will read before making his decision. Nonetheless, this paragraph could be improved by adding a few more details. What have you done for your friend with HIV? I imagined, based upon my clinical knowledge, that your friend has suffered infections, muscle aches (myalgias), and repeated hospitalizations, but you should replace these details with something accurate.Functional Medicine Essay Paper I wrote the following, but be sure to substitute specific details of how you assisted in your friend’s treatment: “Spending time with him in the hospital, I massaged his muscles to relieve myalgias, and provided him with the moral support that is crucial to effective recovery. This experience has solidified my interest in alternative treatments, and I cannot imagine a more fulfilling and compassionate way to spend my life than by promoting the wellness of others.” Again, the content of your essay–and your vision–is wonderful. It was a pleasure to read and edit your work. I think that some careful fine-tuning and restructuring has made this essay into a clear, powerful expression of your ideas, goals and values, and should make a wonderful impression on the admissions committee.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Best of luck with the admissions process. Please keep in touch and let me Alternative Medicine If you were to look up the word alternative in the dictionary, you would find the following definition: different from the usual or conventional; existing or functioning outside the established cultural, social, or economic system. Which is exactly what alternative medicine/therapy is. It is treatment that differs from the more mainstream options in healthcare, and is not commonly used by medical practitioners. But recently, more and more doctors have been prescribing alternative methods to supplement more conventional treatments. The idea is to promote and restore health using whatever means is effective. This paper will explore various treatments of alternative healthcare, why people are more apt to using them now then before, and recent developments in that field.Functional Medicine Essay Paper People choose to use alternative methods for various reasons. They are becoming increasingly aware of medical practices from different cultures. Many are frustrated with what conventional medicine can do. The side effects of some medicines make you feel even more sick than you already were. They have the desire to take fewer medications and experience fewer side effects. Alternative therapies also put more emphasis on healing the whole person, instead of just focusing on the disease. Alternative medicine also cuts personal health care costs. Under the pressure to reduce healthcare costs, complementary and alternative medicine is becoming a relevant alternative to traditional pharmacological therapies. As the burden of chronic diseases continues to increase, medical professionals are coming to realize the hidden value of complementary and Native American healing techniques. Yoga is one of the most popular alternative practices currently used in the western world. The growing body of evidence confirms the efficacy of yoga in preventing and treating various health complications.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Purpose According to Jayasinghe (2004), yoga is a combination of physical, mental, and emotional exercises aimed to create and help sustain physical and mental well-being. Yoga is a complex philosophy, a lifestyle, which incorporates the elements of physical training and spirituality (Jayasinghe, 2004). The history of yoga dates back some 5,000 years, although the Yoga Sutra, the fundamental text of classical yoga, appeared somewhere between 200 B.C. and 300 A.D. (Javasinghe, 2004). Today, the number of people practicing yoga in the U.S. continues to increase. For thousands of Americans, yoga is just an element of the popular culture. However, yoga is also an instrument of disease prevention and control. Yoga: An Evidence-Based Practice? Yoga is a popular CAM modality, and the growing body of empirical evidence confirms its therapeutic and preventive efficacy. Culos-Reed, Carlson, Daroux, and Hately-Aldous (2005) conducted a pilot study to evaluate the psychological and physical effects of yoga on breast cancer survivors. Culos-Reed et al. (2005) found that yoga enhanced cancer survivors’ quality of life and wellbeing, reduced their physiological symptoms (e.g. diarrhea), and led to significant reductions in depression, mood disturbance, and confusion. Yoga was found to reduce the symptoms of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis: Kolasinski et al. (2005) confirmed that yoga could relieve the pain and sufferings of patients with osteoarthritis. Unlike conventional treatments, yoga does not lead to adverse health reactions (Kolasinski et al., 2005). It can be equally effective in treating physiological and emotional disturbances. For instance, Woolery, Myers, Sternlieb and Zeltzer (2004) discovered the positive effects of yoga on depression and mood states.Functional Medicine Essay Paper Alternative Medicine vs. Conventional Medicine Prepared for: Angela Chittick Business Communications Instructor Mid-Plains Community College Prepared by: Samantha Maser Business Communications Student March 19, 2017 MEMORANDUM TO: Angela Chittick, Business Communications Instructor FROM: Samantha Maser, Business Communications Student DATE: March 19, 2017 SUBJECT: Alternative medicine vs. Conventional medicine Here is my analytical report on whether taking on more alternative therapies will help our family with our overall health and budget. In researching this topic, I found out that even though most adults use some form of alternative medicines, there is a lack of evidence based information regarding efficiency Functional Medicine Essay Paper When our family grew to five our budget grew smaller in certain areas. With health care and prescription costs growing, our budget is being stretched by the added doctor visits, medications, and prescriptions. With Alternative Healthcare on the rise and our need for a healthier lifestyle and extra budget, would it be beneficial for my family to change over to a “natural” household. Purpose The purpose of this report is to weigh the costs and benefits associated with alternative medicines and healthcare and see how they compare with conventional or complementary medicine and health care. Scope I have decided to start my research with finding out just what Complementary and Alternative Medicine is and the areas it consists of as well as the history behind them. From there I will weigh the Benefits and Downfalls of these practices and look at the overall Functional Medicine Essay Paper Everyday products are advertised claiming to be natural and cure any condition one may have. Some of these products claim to be some ancient secrets with testimonials of people who say it changed their life. These types of medicine are usually not proven and are called alternative medicine, but are they safe? Alternative medicine is a growing trend, but most people don’t realize what harm could be done to their body by straying from conventional medicine. From the article “ Complementary, Alternative, or Integrated Health” from the Department of Health & Human Services, alternative medicine is an uncommon treatment in place of conventional medicine and has history of use. These types of medicine are hard to find because if they are studied and proven to work they are accepted into conventional medicine practices. It is important to research an alternative before starting one and to consult a medical professional. It is also important to remember that some alternative medicines may work differently on different people and could also not be effective for some people. (“Complementary”). In the article “Running the Numbers on Alternative Medicine” published in Time by Amanda Gengler, “One third of Americans use some form of alternative medicine.” Insurance companies usually do not cover alternative medicines leaving the patient to pay in full for their treatment Functional Medicine Essay Paper Get a 10 % discount on an order above $ 100 Use the following coupon code : NURSING10