According to the consumer intelligence company NIQ, sales of products with food-as-medicine claims have outpaced total food and beverage sales. These claims include that food can improve metabolism support, the microbiome, inflammation, blood sugar control, acid reflux, joint support and pain control.  

One of the focuses of functional medicine is disease prevention -- focusing on preventing disease by lifestyle changes and diet, instead of getting diagnosed with a disease and then treating it.  

According to the CDC, six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more. These conditions are some of the leading causes of death globally and are responsible for 70% of deaths around the world. 

“Preventing disease can decrease the amount of side effects from potential medications which may be taken during the diseased treatment,” said Kelly Pavlish, a nurse practitioner who practices functional medicine in Belleview, Nebraska. “Preventing disease has been shown to be much cheaper than treating disease. Functional healthcare in general attempts at preventing disease. When a provider is preventing disease, the provider may identify why that client is at risk for the disease either by family history, environmental factors or a particular lab value.”  

Some functional health practitioners believe that they can assess what diseases patients are more susceptible to and what changes patients need to make to bring those risks down by doing tests on their blood or stool. However, Sabine Zempleni, a University of Nebraska professor of Nutrition and Health Sciences disagrees.  

“I know there are so many tests out there that, especially with personalized nutrition, that say, ‘Well, we can test your genome, and then we can say what you should eat or shouldn't eat.’ We are not there yet. The science is not there yet,” Zempleni said.  

Zempleni said that your nutritional needs and gut health start at conception, so no number of tests can show you exactly what you need; It's not always possible to prevent disease or "fix” your gut. 

If parents are obese, starving, not active or don’t have a healthy diet, this impacts the future risk of disease for the child and the grandchild of those parents. Even during the first weeks of pregnancy, unhealthy eating habits can affect the DNA of the fetus, Zempleni said. 

Although she said getting these tests done and going to a personalized nutrition professional may help, these tests would not be a life changing process. It would more likely be a simple change in diet that improves someone’s quality of life. 

Pavlish claims that preventing disease is much cheaper than treating disease, and that preventive medicine “would save the country’s healthcare system billions of dollars,” but Zempleni said there is no fool-proof way to do so. 

“The dark side of it is that it's really used to make money and make money without conscience, promoting tiny bits of scientific information, turning them into money,” Zempleni said. “So, I am not, don't want to be lumped in with functional physician, medicine, functional nutritionist, because that's not science, okay, that's a branding.”  

She said the idea of eating a balanced diet doesn’t attract the attention that functional health promises do, so promoting a balanced diet wouldn’t make the money that the brand of “Functional Health” does. 

 

If there is no science behind functional health, why is it becoming so popular?  

 

When users open Instagram or TikTok, they have access to thousands of sources who are not qualified to provide the information they are saying to their audience. This makes it hard to decipher who is telling the truth. 

UNL student Brooklyn Marxsen said she has heard about functional health and how the gut impacts health via social media platforms TikTok and Instagram. She says that she would be open to trying tactics like lifestyle and diet changes if she could go to the doctor less and spend less money.  

According to a Gallup poll, 28% of Americans do not have much confidence in the government to keep food safe, and 14% of Americans have no confidence at all. Zempleni suggests a lot of this mistrust comes from the internet. 

Marxsen said she thinks American distrust in the healthcare system is “scary stuff.” 

After the murder of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, Americans may be more on edge about this topic than ever. People are beginning to doubt American healthcare and they want to find a system that they trust. 

“In a brutal way they help people who are desperate with the regular medical establishment system,” Zempleni said. “They do, and in the process, they earn a lot of money.” 

Zempleni suggests that functional doctors may be preying on those who believe the American healthcare system has failed them. The more distrust Americans have in the healthcare system, the more business functional doctors receive.  

This may be because they have a condition that traditional medicine isn’t helping, or because they’ve seen something online.  

“Now, if you see a dietitian who does functional nutrition, it's usually because she has a private practice and she wants to carve a branded section out for herself,” Zempleni says.  

However, Pavlish says she doesn’t think functional medicine or conventional medicine is more profit focused.  

“I would say any provider practicing either conventional medicine or functional medicine can run a successfully profitable business,” Pavlish said.  

While it is true that gut health, lifestyle and nutrition are extremely important to overall health. Functional Medicine may not be all that it claims to be. According to Zempleni, it may be best to keep it simple with a balanced diet, eight hours of sleep, socializing and getting sunlight.