Froggy: I think you have a fairly balanced view which I appreciate. I think a lot of people on web forums don't believe clinicians are looking for the root cause and really do only address symptoms, and it saddens me for them if they have had such experiences, because mainstream medicine does support looking deeper into certain causes and diagnostic evaluation. It's true that often free T4 is the only thyroid hormone initially tested when a thyroid imbalance is suspected, but this doesn't show that a doctor will frequently re-order additional thyroid studies at follow-up if there is still strong concern for thyroid issues or add other additional testing. It's rather a tightrope because it's also seen as clinician's responsibilities to try to keep medical costs from spiraling even further out of control.

I have a keen interest in "integrative medicine" which is an approach which blends mainstream western medicine with alternative/holistic treatments with scientific evidence base. I haven't read into functional medicine in great detail, but integrative medicine follows similar principles of the interconnectivity of the different systems and seeing the body and person as a whole (including mental, physical, spiritual and environmental components. It sounds like functional medicine falls under the holistic medicine umbrella, with certain aspects being in line with integrative medicine.

I see in the wikipedia article that functional medicine in general supports the discredited study linking vaccines to autism. Hopefully this is a belief supported by a minority in functional medicine.

Do you have a link to the gluten-schizophrenia research? I'd really like to read it.