@cindiwass Thanks, I am doing fine. Functional medicine looks at ways to prevent disease instead of treating symptoms. For example finding ways to reduce inflammation with diet choices, etc. instead of treating arthritis pain with drugs. There is also the AAEM , American Academy of Environmental Medicine which also looks at preventing disease. They think outside the box. My doctor who treated my thyroid was in AAEM and he criticized an endocrinologist who found the issues, but didn't help because they thought it was "normal" functioning. My AAEM doctor said that what doctors think of as "normal" is really "average" because that is defined by blood tests on everyone and many who have abnormal results. He wanted to have thyroid function to be optimal and worked out thyroid medications to get that. Also in doing hormone replacement, he also tested for the biochemistry to detox from the hormones because that is the mechanism by which it can raise risks of cancer. You can help the detox pathways with supplements. Here are some links.
https://www.aaemonline.org/
https://www.ifm.org/functional-medicine/

My FMPs are nurse practitioners that were tired and exasperated by insurance companies wanting them to give out pills for symptoms and not look for the cause of the symptom. My PCP practices medicine that way, he’s exhausting. The root cause of most of my issues were Lyme disease. They also don’t pay as much attention to “within normal limits” test results, every body is different and each body needs to be learned and treated the best way for that body. FMPs think out of the box and sometimes just throw the box out. Always worth a shot. My insurance doesn’t cover it, but the flexible spending account does help ease the costs.