Functional Pathology in Australia

Mary Cavaggion and Peter Gotis are the directors of Nutripath Integrative Pathology Services, who have a combined 50+ years working in pathology testing. Through their lengthy careers beginning in traditional pathology and following through to specialist functional pathology testing, they have been key contributors to the growth and evolution of the Functional Medicine health sector in Australia and New Zealand. In this interview, we asked Mary and Peter to explain more about functional medicine, what functional pathology is, and how it can benefit consumers.

The first question I need to ask you, is what is functional pathology, and how does it differ from normal pathology?

Functional pathology testing began because individuals began asking for it, often because they had experienced shortfalls in the traditional health system models for testing. At the same time, dedicated practitioners, also frustrated with the limitations of symptom-centric medicine, and seeing little improvement in their patients’ health conditions, began doing their own research to find solutions. Rather than diagnosing based on a person’s symptoms, they were more interested in finding out about the underlying reasons for the symptoms. What became clear over time was that a more detailed