Dr Grant Fourie

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't want to be a doctor.
I thought doctors fixed people. I thought Family doctors were intimately involved in the health of the families who came to see them.
But then medicine changed! General practitioners were downgraded to referral officers that simply referred people to the real doctors - The Specialist. These doctors are supposed to know everything about the disease or disorders they specialise in.

People started to bypass the GP and just go straight to the specialist. Women go to gynae's, children go to paediatricians, even with trivial problems because one wants to be treated by "the best" not somebody who's going to guess.
At great cost to society and personally, medicine grew extortionately expensive. Medicine became about the diseases rather than the people with the diseases.
Patients are managed according to protocols or algorithms or national guidelines.There is little talk of cure; rather there is chronic management, symptom relief, prescriptions with lists of medicines to be taken for life. Nobody questions it; it's the price of ageing in the modern world; its normal!
But what if you don't feel better? Still feel tired? Still feel depressed? Still need sleeping tablets? Are you well if you're tests are normal but you're on 6 drugs every day?
Are you well if you have no symptoms?
Does your specialist have a solution if you don't respond to his medication? YES, SEND YOU TO DIFFERENT SPECIALIST. No specialist ever referred someone to a generalist - remember, we don't know anything (bitter expression)
This can't right!
Who is the most likely to know about your food, your job stress, your lifestyle habits, your family members, your ex-husband. Who is the most qualified person to understand you in totality. Who deals with a great variety of problems all day long, every day?. Who actually cares about YOU rather than your disease?

Well, a good GP does. Even more so a Functional Medicine doctor who has committed him or herself to a lifetime of learning and understanding the human being in its entirety. Who considers the food you eat to be your most valuable tool to prevent AND cure disease. Who considers keeping your system strong and clean to be far superior to poisoning it with more chemicals that are supposed to keep you "healthy"
There isn't a country in the world that is not overburdened by it's health budget. Medicine is going to change again. We quite literally cannot afford to keep the current system. Even the health system is sick! In spite of better hospitals, more specialist, unbelievable drugs - the world is getting sicker and fatter! Medicine and our understanding of health is going to change.
Functional Medicine is leading the charge in this change and I am proud to call myself one.