His enthusiasm and vision were contagious and groups of natural health practitioners followed his work and accepted his teachings and began to apply this emerging field to patients with chronic health problems. Bland continues to offer inspiring lectures to this day. He coined the term and conducted regular seminars throughout the United States on various subjects such as GI health, immune health, hormone balance, detoxification and so on.
Jeffrey Bland, PhD is most often described as the founder of functional medicine. With access to lab data patient outcomes were improving and against all odds functional medicine as a profession grew and grew. Labs started to test amino acid levels, fatty acids, toxic metals, minerals, vitamins, anti-oxidants, hormones and so on. The reason all this happened was because a small and dedicated group of health care professionals started to use nutrients in the form of supplements, combined with herbal treatments that have for the most part been around for thousands of years and they wrapped all that into the new technology of the day - lab based data. By the time I came on the scene in the 1980’s functional medicine as a profession had been launched. Metametrix was started, Diagnostechs and Genova labs followed. And with the product development and research findings came potential cures far beyond the concepts of preventing scurvy by giving people citrus fruits, we’re talking about a whole new paradigm for treating human disease based on diet and nutritional therapies.Įventually lab testing companies started to form, Great Smokies Lab is often cited as one of the first along with Doctor’s Data. I totally wish I had a video of that! One of the UT Austin biochemists sticking his head out of his lab door and shouting down the hall, “Guys, guys, I just figured out the structure and function for pantothenic acid (vitamin B5).” How cool would that be?Īs the growth of research continued and more and more was learned, supplement companies began to form to produce these new and special products. At the University of Texas Austin campus bold steps were being taken by Roger Williams, PhD and his colleagues as they uncovered secrets of the body. Discoveries were being made left and right about the nature of our bodies and the nutrients we need. During that era certain progressive healers were starting to look at “natural medicine” or “alternative medicine” (the practice of medicine that generally eschews prescription drugs and surgery) from a new light. Learning about functional medicine and the history and origins of the work takes us back to the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. Kind of a know where you came from to understand where you are going type perspective.
I feel a personal debt to the founders of my field and I believe it’s important for those coming into functional medicine now to understand its history and to learn about functional medicine from a view that stretches back in time. Spiderman, Batman, Superman, for this installment we are going to take on the origins of functional medicine. Your planet is destroyed and your parents, wisely, at the last minute, toss you into a space capsule and eject you off your home planet to a corn field where a pleasant middle-aged couple find you. Your parents are murdered and you decide to avenge their deaths.
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