Hey Dr. Rutherford here and today, I’m going to be answering a question. The question is what is a certified functional medicine practitioner? Good question. So cause functional medicine, isn’t really a boy functional medicine. Really? Isn’t an organized discipline. There’s no disciplinary boards. There’s no regulatory boards. There’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really kind of an outlier he’d say, but it is. So I like, you know, I’m chiropractor too. So, you know, you go through chiropractic school, you go to internship, you get, you know, you can take your, your exams and you get, you know, you get your doctorate. And, and, and there’s other specialties, even within the framework of chiropractic, there’s certified chiropractic orthopedist, and there’s a functional neurologist and stuff and certified functional neurology, but there really isn’t their functionality diplomates I should say, but there really isn’t a organization.
That is that is the regulatory boards. So in my state, in my state and other states, there is a requirement that if you get a certain amount of hours and it varies from state to state, if you get a certain amount of hours in functional medicine classes, seminars symposiums, and then you bring those F those, those, those those credits to the board, then then you can become a certified functional medicine practitioner. Now there are a couple of courses that and, and here’s the value of this. So I’m a certified functional medicine practitioner, and here’s the value of this. When I first started functional medicine was just starting. It was just sledding. In fact, it was so early, nobody was calling it functional medicine. No, nobody even knew what to call it. There, there, we had all kinds of different names for it.
And then ultimately a group back east put together a functional medicine university. And then there was another functional medicine Institute. And these were very organized. These are very organized courses in fact, took me like eight months to go through the one course, just because I want it, even though I was practicing functional medicine with many of the original people and probably, you know, knowing it as well as anybody I went through the course. And actually I was very pleased that I did it really brought together an organized aspect of all the differences aspects of functional medicine. So you took so you took courses over that period of time on the key and functional in, in, in being a functional medicine doctor, the nutrients, the supplements inflammatory responses, leaky gut food, sensitivities, just all of these things and kind of an organized fashion and that, and, and so I took all that.
And then you had to take tests all along the way. You had to take tests for every single chapter and every organized topic. And then at the end you had to take a final test and then you pass that, and then you had a functional medicine certification from that entity, but it’s it’s, but it, then you, then I use that and my peer case in Nevada to bring that to my board. And then my board allows me to call myself a certified functional medicine practitioner. I, I guess one of the keys is if you don’t have a certified functional medicine practitioner verification from your state board, then you can’t advertise. You can’t advertise that you’re a certified functional medicine practitioner. So that person’s usually going to have a more, you can be, you could kind of be sure that that person has more education on it at the very least, because in the states that require that that allow you to call yourself a certified functional medicine practitioner.
You know, they, they require either hundreds of hours while they require hundreds of hours of education. And then I guess the last part of that is anybody can call themselves a functional medicine practitioner, honestly, you know, really, I mean, not to put down massage therapists or anything, I’ve, I’ve employed many massage therapists. I got a massage therapist once a month. I respect massage therapist. I’ve worked with massage therapy board here in Nevada, back in the eighties and nineties. And by you could be a massage therapist and start to study supplements, maybe take one course and start giving your patients supplements for, for muscle inflammation. And you can S you can say you’re practicing functional medicine. You can’t call yourself a certified functional medicine practitioner doing that. So if you find a certified functional medicine practitioner, likelihood is you have someone who at least has a comprehensive understanding of what functional medicine is.
And that’s no small thing relative to people who are coming into you with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and chronic pain and gut problems. And that that person who has that designation is probably going to be far more organized in their attack. They’re probably going to be far better at understanding what testing should be done. A lot of people are just going to, they’re going to go to a seminar. They’re going to find, going to similar and leaky gut. Maybe they’re a massage therapist. Maybe they’re an acupuncturist. Maybe they’re a chiropractor who knows, you know, w whatever God, clinical nutritionist or dietician. And they go to one seminar on leaky gut, and then they come back and then they say, they’re practicing functional medicine. And then they have that one aspect of it, but they don’t understand about neuro inflammation. Maybe they don’t understand about, about different toxicities.
Maybe there aren’t, maybe they don’t have an understanding of all the different viral pathogens cause they haven’t been exposed to the full breadth of it. And, and again, there’s not even, there’s not even a lot of courses in the country outside of the ones I’d mentioned. I know the national college of health sciences is putting together a postgraduate course on it. I think Arizona state university is putting together some courses together on it. So functional medicine is it’s, it’s, it’s an evolving thing. If somebody has been able to achieve the designation of a certified functional medicine practitioner in their state, you can at least be assured that they put the time in, in addition to whatever it is that they’re doing during the day, like being a thing, a doctor, even a medical doctor, Benecol doctors that come here interested in being a functional medicine practitioner. Whatever it is you have to put that extra time in that person is probably going to have, you’re going to have much better chance of getting somebody who understands the full breadth of, of how they should attack one of these chronic mystery disease cases or Hashimoto’s, or, or chronic fatigue or chronic fatigue, immune deficiency disease, or any automated is you’re probably gonna have a much better chance that somebody who has achieved that designation in their particular state.
Note: The above text is a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
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