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Functional Nutrition
What does Functional Medicine mean?
The main difference between allopathic medicine and functional medicine is based in a theory of belief. Allopathic medicine is about treating the symptoms, but functional medicine takes a root cause approach to healing. The latter approach treats healing like building the foundation of your house. If you cheat on the foundation, the rest will get shaky. We know when we heal our gut, we are healing the foundation. This means your digestion, your immune system, and even neurotransmitters and hormones needed for a healthy brain become stronger.
What does functional medicine look like?
We focus on you as a unique blueprint, not a cookie cutter form of treatment. This means looking at the whole you: nutrition, lifestyle, stress management, nutritional deficiencies, work-life balance, relationships, sleep cycles, and movement. Functional medicine is client-centered, takes a multi-disciplinary approach to treatment, is holistic, and focuses on chronic conditions-many of which are treatable. Most importantly, rather than mitigate and minimize symptoms, the embedded philosophy is to treat the disorder.
Functional medicine takes the approach that food is medicine. To heal your body from inflammation, the main cause of autoimmune disorders, digestive illness, and even mental health, it is imperative to eat a nutrient dense, whole food diet. It is also important to supplement when necessary. Medicines do have their place, if they are not used as a substitute for healthy lifestyle behaviors. In my practice, I will take it a step further. I look at nutrition, emotional wellness, thought and stress, relationships and passions, healthy sleep and intuition, detoxification, and the power of connection.
What do we cover?
As a practitioner, I do not treat or diagnose, as that is a medical scope of practice. This is the reason I do not accept insurance. I do evaluate and make recommendations as needed which may include diets, supplementation, and testing. Testing is at cost and set by the provider. I do not mark up the costs but do charge evaluation fees, and the rates are determined by the number of biomarkers being tested.
Examples of testing include:
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Genetic SNP Panels
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Food Sensitivities
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Genetic Deficiencies
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Micronutrient Deficiencies
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Hormones Adrenal and Thyroid
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Neurotransmitter testing
What is the process?
The process is linear. Once you are booked for an appointment, you will be sent a diet log to track your behaviors for 3 days as well as an in-depth intake. The more detailed you are, the better! Our first session focuses on the intake, assessment of the logs, recommendations for the next step forward, and supplement recommendations, if necessary. This is also a time to bring in recent blood work. If you don’t have that, the second step would be to order labs appropriate for your concerns or goals. The follow up session will be a continuation of evaluation and recommendations as well as tweaking diet and lifestyle.
How does this fit into mental health?
The most salient concern for health in general is inflammation. We will all acquire some level of inflammation, but when it becomes a runaway train, it can manifest as toxicity and disease. Inflammation left for too long could become leaky gut which then turns into an autoimmune disease, or worse. The gut (the seat of our health) and brain are intricately connected by the vagal nerve. The brain can also be inflamed by our diets. When we have inflammation of the brain, we can see it in anxiety, depression, mood disorders, and in extreme cases, even psychosis.
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