Celebrate National Nurse Practitioner Week With Us!

Join Us in Celebrating our Holistic Family Nurse Practitioner, Martha Bray!

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the NP profession. The first NP program was established in Colorado. There are now over 205,000 NP's licensed to practice in the United States. Martha Bray, FNP-BC, APRN,  is dedicated to the health and well-being of her clients, day in and day out. She works tirelessly in bringing the very best of Integrative Medicine to all of us at AdvancedHealth Clinic.

As a holistic nurse practitioner, Martha uses alternative treatments and medicines that are combined with the traditional Western medicine to care for her clients. Holistic nursing is based on treating a disease by treating the whole person, which includes their mental, spiritual and emotional conditions. Martha focuses on wellness and how to maintain and propagate health as opposed to focusing on illness and the purely curative aspects of health.

Martha, we thank you, and celebrate you for who you are and for all you do! 

What is Functional Medicine?

Functional Medicine incorporates the latest in genetic science, systems biology, and understanding of how environmental and lifestyle factors influence the emergence and progression of disease. Functional medicine addresses the

Holistic Nurse Practitioner
Martha Bray, FNP-BC, APRN

underlying causes of disease, using a system based approach that engages both patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership. It is an evolution in the practice of medicine that better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century. The term “functional medicine” was coined in 1993 to describe the medicine of the future.1 In fact, today, many complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM, practitioners use a functional medicine approach that includes the following:

• Patient uniqueness: Each individual is unique. This uniqueness encompasses voluntary activities, such as decision-making, personality development, and emotional response, and involuntary activities like metabolism of nutrients, cellular processing of information, and communication among the body’s organ systems. Functional medicine professionals realize that all individuals have unique metabolic patterns that affect their health needs and thus, the concept of individuality is central to every aspect of functional medicine, from clinical assessment and diagnosis to the broad spectrum of treatment modalities.  
• Patient-centered approach: Functional medicine practitioners use a patient-centered approach to support wellness. This means that in addition to considering the overall health of the patient, functional medicine practitioners consider the beliefs, attitudes, and motivations, as well as the physical, mental, and emotional aspects, of the patient.
• Preventive care: Optimal health is not just the absence of disease. Even the most minor symptoms can foreshadow more serious conditions later in life. This often happens via the “snowball effect,” in which a “minor” imbalance within the body produces a cascade of biological triggers that can eventually lead to poor health and chronic illness. For this reason, functional medicine focuses on the prevention, instead of just the treatment of, even the most minor imbalances.2

Through changes in lifestyle, environment, and nutrition, functional medicine professionals rely on their knowledge of key physiological, genetic, and biochemical processes for establishing an innovative form of total patient wellness amidst the diversity of interests in health care today.1

References
The Institute for Functional Medicine. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2002, from http://www.fxmed.com/aboutus/about-frame.html
GSDL Functional Medicine. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2002, from http://www.gsdl.com/gsdl/functional_med.html