The integrative medicine approach
Whole-person, root-cause medicine for neurodivergence and complex chronic conditions — the best of conventional care, with functional medicine as its engine, combined with nutrition, cannabinoid medicine and nervous system work.
What is integrative medicine?
Integrative medicine combines conventional medical diagnosis and medication prescribing with a range of evidence-based, natural and non-drug treatments — chosen for the individual and used together, so the whole plan works better than the sum of its parts. It is not anti-medicine; it is medicine that treats the whole person, looks for root causes, and brings mental and physical health together.
In North America, integrative medicine is the newest medical sub-specialty recognised by the American Board of Physician Specialties (ABPS). At the London Resilience Clinic it is the umbrella under which we work, with functional medicine, cannabinoid medicine, microbiome medicine and nervous system regulation among its core methods.
The synergistic approach of integrative medicine
Integrative medicine flips the conventional paradigm on its head. In conventional medicine you try one drug at a time — a slow process that, in complex chronic illness, often gets nowhere. Integrative medicine instead stacks treatments so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Because the underlying biological mechanisms overlap, combining the right botanicals, personalised nutraceuticals and co-factors — chosen from a functional-medicine perspective, and in some cases with cannabinoid medicine — alongside nervous-system regulation, at low personalised doses, produces a stronger response across multiple pathways than any single intervention would.
We combine these together to get symptoms well controlled and help you feel better — then slowly take one thing away at a time.
The principles of integrative medicine
- Personalised, not protocol-driven. Two people with the same diagnosis can need different things, so the plan is built around your biochemistry, brain and nervous system.
- Root causes, not just symptoms. Only treatments that address the right underlying contributors give lasting benefit beyond symptom suppression.
- Whole-person and trans-diagnostic. We treat the overlapping symptom clusters that travel together, rather than one label in isolation.
- Mental and physical together. Nervous system regulation sits alongside physical treatment, because the two are inseparable.
- Neurodivergence-aware. Many patients are neurodivergent and respond differently to treatment, which we build into the plan.
- Synergy. Treatments are stacked so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Who integrative medicine helps
Integrative medicine is especially effective where people have a wide range of overlapping symptoms, are sensitive to medications, or where there is no good standard treatment. This is precisely the picture in neurodivergent people who suffer with complex chronic medical symptoms — ADHD, autism and AuDHD. It is also where we help most: the chronic, multi-system conditions that commonly co-occur, such as EDS and hypermobility, fibromyalgia, MCAS, chronic fatigue/ME, long covid and chronic pain, along with mental health conditions such as depression and OCD. Because these patterns run in families and across the lifespan, we frequently care for parents and children together — integrative family medicine in practice. For children specifically, our paediatric integrative practice applies the same principles to the developing child.
Standard care vs integrative medicine
The difference is not “anti-medicine” — where medication helps, it is used, and every consultation is with a specialist doctor. When symptoms become chronic they overlap in the brain and body, so integrative medicine treats the whole person rather than one symptom at a time.
| Standard care | Integrative medicine |
|---|---|
| Doctor-centred | Built around you |
| Everyone receives the same treatment for a diagnosis | Personalised to your biochemistry, brain & nervous system |
| Focuses on standard pharmaceuticals | Adds holistic treatments, cannabinoid & novel medicines |
| Focuses on a particular disease | Improves trans-diagnostic symptom clusters & quality of life |
| Narrow blood tests that often read “normal” | Deeper functional & microbiome testing to address root causes |
| Separates mental from physical symptoms | Treats the brain, nervous system and body together using an integrative approach |
Is integrative medicine evidence-based?
Yes — integrative medicine is grounded in evidence. The honest nuance is that the threshold of evidence often differs. Randomised controlled trial (RCT) data — usually treated as the gold standard — simply does not exist for many integrative treatments, for an understandable reason, not because of any big-pharma conspiracy.
Large RCTs are expensive to run, so they are typically funded by pharmaceutical companies who can recoup the cost through a patent and a licence — which naturally favours single-compound drugs. Single compounds are also far easier to test in a placebo-controlled format than multi-component approaches such as nutrition, nervous-system work or personalised protocols. And conventional healthcare is built around short appointments where a prescription can be written and dispensed, which is how most central-government funding is structured.
None of this makes those treatments wrong — it means the evidence base is shaped by what is easy and profitable to trial. Integrative medicine weighs a wider body of evidence: mechanistic research, smaller studies, decades of clinical experience and careful monitoring — and we are honest about what is well established and what is still emerging.
Integrative, functional & conventional medicine
- Conventional medicine diagnoses and treats disease, largely with pharmaceuticals and procedures — essential, but often focused on one system or symptom at a time.
- Integrative medicine is the umbrella: it keeps everything valuable about conventional medicine and adds evidence-based, whole-person methods, used together.
- Functional medicine is one core method within integrative medicine — a systems-biology approach that uses advanced testing to find the root causes and contributors of illness.
- “Holistic” describes the underlying philosophy of treating the whole person, mind and body together.
Frequently asked questions
Integrative medicine combines conventional medical diagnosis and prescribing with evidence-based, non-drug methods — functional testing, nutrition, botanical and cannabinoid medicine, and nervous system work — chosen for the individual and used together to treat the whole person and address root causes.
It is evidence-based and delivered by qualified medical doctors. It is not “alternative” or anti-medicine — it keeps everything valuable about conventional care and adds a wider, personalised toolbox, used alongside it.
Integrative medicine is the umbrella approach; functional medicine is one core method within it, focused on advanced root-cause testing of the microbiome, methylation, mitochondria, hormones and more. “Holistic” describes the whole-person philosophy behind both.
Yes — the London Resilience Clinic offers integrative and functional medicine led by Dr Dani Gordon, with particular expertise in complex, multi-system conditions and neurodivergence, in person in central London and by video across the UK.