Illuminating the Path Forward

Location: The Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa, Hollywood, Florida
Start Date: 2009-05-27
End Date: 2009-05-30

Integrating New Approaches for the Evaluation and Treatment of Mood Disorders

The 16th International Functional Medicine Conference is being held in Fort Lauderdale this year. We highly recommend this programme to all our practitioners as a truly integrated medicine conference that attracts experts and practitioners from around the world. This is an absolute must if you wish to stay ahead of the curve in using nutritional and other mechanisms of intervention to achieve optimal health care.

Michael Ash is one of the invited speakers looking at the role of the gastrointestinal bacterial populations and atypical depression from a clinical perspective. Brochure

Over the last three years, IFM has received a multitude of requests from practitioners asking for an in-depth Symposium that examines mood disorders from a functional medicine perspective. After two years of research (including the publication of the Depression monograph, Depression: Advancing the Treatment Paradigm), many months of curriculum and advisory group meetings combined with discussions with our expert faculty group, we are pleased to present the 16th International Symposium on Functional Medicine: Illuminating the Path Forward: Integrating New Approaches for the Evaluation and Treatment of Mood Disorders.

The magnitude of mood disorders is epidemic in proportion. Depression now afflicts more than 120 million people worldwide and almost 20 million in the US alone, yet:

• Only 1/3 of depressed individuals receive treatment in the US
• More than half of depressed patients achieve either only partial or no recovery using conventional pharmaceuticals
• Unpleasant and undesirable side effects contribute to poor treatment compliance, often furthering incomplete resolution of symptoms

Program Schedule

Mood disorders are complex, mutifactorial conditions that are co-morbid with many chronic diseases and that share many underlying metabolic dysregulations with those conditions. The 16th International Symposium on Functional Medicine will shine the light more brightly on underlying antecedents and triggers, as well as the ways in which genes, diet, and environment interact to alter brain chemistry and detract from optimal health and functional balance.

Register soon! The first 200 registrants are invited to participate in the inaugural meeting of the Functional Medicine Clinical Practice Network on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 from 6:30 – 7:30 pm.

What if we have been shining the light in the wrong places?

What if the answer is not to be found in a pill, but in the way our genes, diet, and environment interact to alter brain chemistry and detract from optimal health and functional balance? Program Schedule

What if myriad factors such as:

• Dietary imbalance
• Nutritional insufficiencies
• Hormonal dysregulation
• Chronic inflammation
• Occult infections
• Environmental toxins
• Emotional trauma
• Attitudes and beliefs
• Lack of movement and exercise

are the real and underlying causes of an epidemic of disorders that persistently plague your patients, despite meteoric rises in prescriptions for mood-altering medications? Speaker Bios