Our history
Functional Integrative Medicine
From the beginning, our clinical practice has sought to use all the techniques, all the knowledge that, rigorously, scientifically and medically proven, could contribute to the fulfilment of that desideratum. Thus, in order to meet the demands of more and more people with increasingly complex and demanding clinical pictures, we took on the challenge of promoting a multidisciplinary service that, working as a team, could fulfill our Hippocratic dream. And so this project was born - Functional Integrative Medicine.
There is Medicine beyond Medicine
The world was different in the 1990s when Dr Cristina Sales challenged the status quo and asserted that there was medicine beyond medicine.
To help each person to achieve physical, psychological and social well-being, it was necessary to broaden horizons and embrace knowledge from all disciplines that, being scientifically proven, could contribute to this objective.
Her path to opening new doors is both unique and peculiar.
If today, in the 21st century, there are still those who doubt that we are fascinatingly complex beings and that linear therapeutic solutions, based on the simplistic idea that "a diagnosis has only one cause and one treatment", are not the most effective, can you imagine what it was like in 1998 when Dr. Cristina opened her clinic and Cristina Sales - Functional Medicine opened?
It was not only an innovative concept, it was a pioneering and unique project in Portugal and Europe, driving the evolution that took place in the following decades. Endowed with a unique curriculum, she continuously integrated new specialties, diagnosis and therapeutic techniques with impressive results, even in the most complex clinical cases.
In fact, the clinical results she achieved led to a gradual and significant increase in those who sought her out in search of new insight into their medical condition, attracting people from all over the country.
Alongside breaking barriers and changing the paradigm of the approach to complex clinical situations, opening a window of hope for hundreds of people who could not find effective answers in other approaches, it brought to health the gains the evolution of social communication, creating blogs, newsletters and online magazines, making the scientific knowledge of its approach accessible.
While she fought for the evolution of Medicine, she also fought another battle that, unfortunately, she ended up losing. In November 2014, Dr. Cristina passed away, leaving us a method, a philosophy and a legacy that it was up to us to keep alive and perpetuate her commitment to those who seek us out.
The focus on details and particulars (where the key to the case often lies).
The incessant search for the most appropriate therapeutic options.
The greatest possible knowledge of the best scientific evidence.
The personalization of the whole process.
She also left us the possibility of the project continuing: Dr Miguel Damas. Being her son, is one of the few second generation functional medicine doctors in the world, which allows him to have a natural vision about this way of thinking and approaching the human body.
With a Bachelor in Medicine and specialising in General Practice, he was born and grew up within the unique vision that Dr Cristina implemented, absorbing and learning it in a mother-to-child passing of knowledge.
With Dr. Miguel at the helm, our clinic has evolved significantly. Being always faithful to the principles that gave Dr. Cristina the title of "our House" by Visão magazine in April 2010, it has been adapting to the new reality, the new needs and the new phase, focusing on performance, health and health optimization.
"We believe that the body should never limit what we accomplish in life."
Regardless of our dreams, it can't be our bodies putting a limit on us, whether it's through recurring injuries, chronic fatigue, burnout, being overweight or autoimmune diseases.
The Method
(by Dr. Cristina Sales)
The disease and the process of becoming ill are unique in each person. And it is in the comprehensive understanding of this singularity that the most convenient therapeutic strategy will reside.
Each person has their own unique genetic profile, their family of origin with predispositions to certain diseases, their experiences, values, interpersonal relationships and life-long conditioning experiences.
Each person creates their own habits and lifestyles and faces the vicissitudes and responds to the challenges of his life with the physical and psychic capacities at his disposal and is, in multiple ways, conditioned by all of them.
Each person acts and interacts with their environment - family, social, professional, cultural and environmental - in a way that is specific to them and also conditions them.
In Integrative Medicine the person is the centre of our attention.
The name of your disease diagnosis is a very important medical classification, but the person who has that disease is the central core of the intervention in Integrative Medicine.
And we seek to go further. In Integrative Medicine, the patient, once informed about the scientific evidence of the various possible therapeutic options, is invited, whenever possible, to participate responsibly in the decisions of the diagnostic and therapeutic intervention, further emphasizing their centrality in their clinical and therapeutic process.
Many factors that are related to lifestyle and to the relationship with oneself and the surrounding environment intervene in the process of installation of chronic diseases.
In Integrative Medicine, we stress the importance, crucial, and appeal to the adoption of healthy lifestyles for a consistent health recovery process. We give special emphasis to nutrition, physical exercise and movement techniques, the stimulation of enriching family and social relationships, personal development, maintaining a balanced mind-body relationship, and the search for an ecologically healthy environment.
This is an area that everyone has a responsibility to promote on an ongoing basis.
It is a path that no one can take for another person.
The classical medical method, which seeks to find, for each disease, a single cause and a specific treatment, has been facing increasing difficulties, as it does not fit the needs posed by the complex chronic diseases of modern societies.
Functional Medicine approaches the understanding of a patient with a complex chronic disease, or with a complex set of various diseases and symptoms, through a matrix composed of eight cores that correspond to eight functional biological balances. These are: Immunological Vigilance, Digestion, Absorption and Barrier Integrity, Structural Integrity, Oxidative/Reductive Homeodynamics, Inflammatory Process, Detoxification and Biotransformation, Hormonal and Neurotransmitter Regulation, Psychological and Spiritual Balance.
Understanding the functioning of these eight cores in people with complex disease allows for a more assertive strategy of functional diagnosis and multidisciplinary treatment, with greater probability of success in global health recovery.
In an innovative way, our method integrates the strategy of Functional Medicine in the concept and method of Integrative Medicine.
Integrative Medicine characteristically draws on all therapeutic approaches, health care professionals and disciplines appropriate to achieving optimal health and treatment status.
To draw up a treatment plan, along with the most advanced surgical techniques and the most up-to-date conventional drugs, preventive medicine strategies, multiple approaches to mind-body intervention and the commonly called complementary therapies are considered.
