The Functional Medicine Matrix
The structural integrity category is a little more complicated and diffuse but can best be thought of as cellular integrity. Things need to stick together in order to function. If the bricks in your house fall out of place one by one, eventually the whole house collapses. Cellular integrity includes that of your arteries and veins as well as that of your tissues. However, tissue breakdown starts at the cellular and arteriolar level. So, we typically view cardiovascular disease as its own specialty and in Functional Medicine it is given a whole study module yet the same processes that cause heart attacks and strokes also decrease kidney function, brain perfusion and blood flow to the entire body. So the break down in vascular integrity that starts in the teen age years doesn’t result in heart disease for decades yet the same process is ongoing in the entire body, not just the heart. It’s best to view vascular disease as a whole body process and not merely limited to the heart and brain.