Functional Medicine

I wanted to open a discussion to get people’s opinions on functional medicine. While I was in an MS program, I met multiple MPH students (including some with MDs) who were really into functional medicine and hoping to pursue it in some form after graduation. When I would discuss with them, I was highly skeptical of the claims they were making, but didn’t know whether to push back on these things. It didn’t seem particularly evidence-based to me, and it surprised me to see how emotionally invested these people were in treatments that didn’t have much scientific backing. In all, they seemed to genuinely believe that it worked, but I didn’t have much faith in the things they told me.

I know I’m posting this with my personal angle already showing, but I was curious if others have experience with functional medicine, or have witnessed others in public health get invested in potentially unscientific practice.