"Medicine should help people thrive, not just manage symptoms."
Looking after your health and treating symptoms is only one part of the picture. Understanding why your body works the way it does is another key aspect. Dr Chris Chappel, a specialist GP and founder of Evergreen Doctors, has dedicated his career to empowering patients to look beyond symptom management to find the root causes of the symptoms. His approach, Functional Medicine, starts with a question conventional medicine rarely has time to ask: not just what are the symptoms, but where do they come from?
”I had patients coming to me with low energy, brain fog, gut problems, mood issues, and poor sleep, who had seen multiple doctors and been told everything was normal. Even though that just meant everything that had been tested to date was not in a disease range on the lab result,” says Dr Chris Chappel.
The turning point for Chappel was recognising that general practice was incomplete, and he started studying Functional Medicine. ”The patients who crystallised that for me were the ones who reversed conditions they'd been told were permanent. When someone comes off insulin and blood pressure medications they've been on for a decade, or their eczema clears and their depression lifts after treating a gut condition, you can't unsee that,” says Chappel.
In Functional Medicine, the patient is treated as a whole. The role of their environment, relationships, emotions, sleep, toxins, and genetics in why they became unwell is asked about and acknowledged. This understanding forms the foundation of a holistic, personalised approach to getting them optimally well. The first consultation lasts for one hour rather than 10 minutes, like in a GP practice.
”We use a nutrition-first, drugs last approach, where helpful, we use targeted supplements. We still refer to specialists and use medications where necessary, but they are always stepping stones, and ideally, we’d cease all medications and even supplements, if possible, in the long term. If we’re going to use a medication, we’d ideally know your unique pharmacogenomics so we can select the best medication based on how your body will process it,” he says.
Functional Medicine is like servicing a car before anything is noticeably wrong.
Why the Gut Is the Place to Start
The gut is arguably the most underestimated organ in the body. It houses around 70% of the immune system, produces approximately 90% of the body's serotonin, and communicates directly with the brain via the vagus nerve. When the gut microbiome is disrupted through poor diet, chronic stress, repeated antibiotics, or excess alcohol, it triggers a series of events that affect mood, cognition, energy, hormonal balance, and immune function. The gut produces compounds the body depends on, like immune signals and metabolic substrates. Remove those, and the body can function, but not optimally.
”I regularly see patients whose sleep, anxiety, or depression improves once we address their gut health, without initially needing to change their medication. Patients with chronic urticaria or joint pain whose inflammation resolves after we work on intestinal permeability. Patients with persistent fatigue whose energy returns once we treat an underlying gut condition. The gut is where so many upstream causes live, and it's often the last place anyone has looked,” Chappel explains.
Gut Health and Ageing
One of the most exciting frontiers in longevity research is the gut-ageing connection. The microbiome changes as we age: diversity tends to decline, and inflammatory bacterial species increase. However, this process is not fixed. Diet, sleep, movement, and targeted clinical interventions can shift microbiome composition and slow biological ageing.
”We use tools like epigenetic testing to measure biological age directly, not just the year on your birth certificate, and build personalised protocols around what we find. The patients who invest in their gut health often report feeling more energetic, mentally clearer, and physically younger. We've been observing this clinically for years,” says Chappel.
Dr Chappel’s 5 Practical Steps to Better Health
1. Stop treating symptoms and start finding causes. If you have persistent fatigue, gut issues, mood problems, or pain, and you’ve been told everything is normal, the investigation hasn’t gone far enough. You deserve a deeper answer.
2. Protect and diversify your gut microbiome. Remove ultra-processed food, refined seed oils, and excess sugar. Add fibre diversity: research suggests aiming for 30 different plant foods each week, to meaningfully improve your microbial health. Be cautious and intentional about antibiotic use.
3. Know your actual numbers. A standard blood panel leaves gaps: fasting insulin, inflammatory markers, micronutrient levels, and hormone panels. You cannot optimise what you are not measuring. Invest in comprehensive testing at least once.
4. Treat sleep as a clinical priority. Chronic poor sleep is one of the most potent drivers of metabolic dysfunction, immune dysregulation, and accelerated ageing. It is not a lifestyle preference. It is a biological necessity. Address it with the same seriousness you would bring to diet or exercise.
5. Find a clinician who treats you as a whole person. The greatest health transformations I witness occur when someone has a practitioner who understands how every system in their body connects. Fragmented care, with a different specialist for every isolated part, will never get you to optimal health. Integration is the point.
About the Expert:
Dr Chris Chappel is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and one of Australia’s leading practitioners in functional and metabolic medicine.
With advanced training from international bodies in functional, anti-aging, and nutritional medicine, Chris founded Evergreen Doctors to help patients uncover the root causes of chronic illness and build lasting health through personalised, whole-person care.
He now also serves as Chief Medical Officer at TMRW Health, where he’s helping bring AI-powered precision health to Australians at scale. His philosophy is simple: medicine should help people thrive, not just manage symptoms.