When you go to the doctor, you probably expect them to “find what’s wrong.” In conventional medicine, that usually means looking for a thing: a tumor, a broken bone, a clogged artery, a lab value that’s out of range. Health is defined by the absence of those things, and treatment is aimed at fixing or removing them.
That way of thinking works well in emergencies. If you break your arm, you need an X-ray and a cast. If you have an infection, you need antibiotics. But when it comes to chronic problems like fatigue, autoimmune disease, depression, or metabolic syndrome, this “find the thing, fix the thing” approach often falls short.
That’s because it’s built on a certain ontology—a way of defining what’s real in health and disease. Conventional medicine assumes diseases are discrete entities, things you either have or don’t. Functional medicine takes a different view.
We see the body not as a collection of parts but as a system of processes and relationships. Cells don’t just exist as “things”—they are constantly working, producing energy, repairing, detoxifying, and communicating. Your health isn’t defined by the absence of a label but by the presence of function across all these levels.
Think of it this way: conventional medicine often asks, “What’s broken?” Functional medicine asks, “What’s out of balance?”
This shift changes everything. It changes how we interpret symptoms (as signals of deeper imbalance rather than isolated problems). It changes how we define health (as resilience and adaptability, not just “not sick”). And it changes how we treat (by restoring the terrain and upstream causes, not just silencing downstream symptoms).
At UpStream, this systems-based way of seeing health guides everything we do. It’s why we look at your nutrition, sleep, stress, environment, and microbiome—not just your lab numbers. It’s why we don’t stop at telling you what disease you have, but work with you to restore the conditions where your body can flourish.
Health is more than the absence of disease. It’s the presence of balance, energy, and resilience. That’s not just philosophy—it’s functional medicine.
