ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Functional medicine

Functional medicine is like a detective story for your health. When you go to the doctor, they ask you what's wrong and try to give you a medicine to fix that problem, like if you have a headache they'll give you some medicine to make it go away. But functional medicine looks at you as a whole person and tries to figure out why you have that headache in the first place.

Functional medicine doctors ask lots of questions, like what you eat, how much you sleep, what kind of stress you have, and more, to figure out why your body isn't feeling well. Then they try to help you make changes in things like your diet and lifestyle to help your body heal from the inside out.

So instead of just treating the symptoms, functional medicine helps you figure out the root cause of what's going on in your body so you can feel better for the long-term. It's like being a detective for your own health!