Rome, Nov 15-16-17, 2019
Participating in this Symposium was very exciting for me because it is the first major event I attended as a Nutritionist. I felt part of a group of professionals who have the same thought and the same desire to put into practice what the scientific evidence is supporting even in the nutritional field.
Functional medicine is spreading exponentially in other states such as the United States, England and New Zealand. Here in Italy we are still in its infancy, but the desire to get involved and spread it is very strong.
During the Symposium, foreign and Italian professionals of high level and culture in functional medicine, such as Dr. Fasano, Dr. Bevacqua and Dr. O’Brian – to name a few – had their speech .
They explained how nutrition and micronutrition are able to resolve – or at least alleviate – symptoms that are not related to a specific organic cause or a defined disease, but that depend on chronic inflammation of unknown origin.
The functional medicine approach consists of understanding which mechanisms make certain disorders acute, taking into consideration the person and his lifestyle and not the disease itself.
In particular, functional medicine deals not so much with acute diseases, but with chronic degenerative diseases, which are increasing, and are those closely linked to the quality of lifestyle. Examples of such diseases are psoriasis – which is an autoimmune disease – and the cognitive decline.
So the aim is not to stem the damage, but to understand and modulate the causes that triggered it starting from a thorough history of the person and confirmed by clinical diagnoses.
The path that functional medicine offers can accompany traditional medicine and where traditional medicine fails to resolve, functional medicine can give an unexpected result. In order to modulate and eliminate the cause of a disturbance, various factors must be taken into consideration:
- nutrition
- stress management
- the correct night rest
- constant physical activity
- detoxification from pollutants present in the environment
Whoever undertakes a path of functional medicine, opens up to a multidisciplinary approach: it is the medicine of tomorrow that goes very well with a healthy lifestyle based on healthy nutrition.
I returned home with great enthusiasm and with the desire to put into practice the ideas that emerged from this event. I am even more convinced that great results can be achieved with personalized functional nutrition.
During the return journey I immersed myself in reading the book by Dr. Bevacqua, a book of great interest and that I recommend to those who want to deepen their knowledge of the “medicine of tomorrow”.
Dr. Paola Proietti Cesaretti
