A short YouTube clip by Dr. Joshua John-Ram Schacter arguing that clinicians should not treat patients merely as joints but address whole-person factors to resolve and sustain improvements in joint pain. He contrasts traditional orthopedic focus on isolated joints with functional medicine’s emphasis on root causes such as inflammation, metabolic health, and diabetes as contributors to joint symptoms.
Never treat the patient just as a joint. In my earlier career and in most traditional orthopedic surgeons, you come into the orthopedic surgeon and all they really care about is your joint. I'm going to look at your shoulder, I'm going to look at your knee, I'm going to look at your wrist. But the fact of the matter is, in functional medicine, we look at the whole person, and so that's how we heal joint pain. It's not just addressing the joint, but addressing the root cause of the joint pain, which may be partially due to your metabolism. Do you have high levels of inflammation? Do you have diabetes? Is there something else that we can help you with in order to manage that joint pain and make our treatments last longer?
She Traveled from Colorado for a Different Approach to Knee Pain | Lois’ Story
