My training was very traditional and served me very well — until it didn’t. Functional Medicine is a paradigm shift in health care. Once you see the awe-inspiring beauty of how the body works as a system and not just isolated parts connected together, you can never again “unsee” that truth. So, we can’t just think about diseases of various organs - heart disease, pulmonary disease, kidney disease, eye disease, etc., and assume if we address issues with those organs in isolation, we can restore health. They are all connected. Once we find the root causes of disease and address those, all the organ systems will come back into balance and health. It requires detective work on the part of both physician and patient in a trusting partnership. It also requires the more challenging work of addressing the root causes of disease primarily through lifestyle modifications, diet and nutritional support. Conventional treatments may also be necessary, but nutrition and lifestyle can often resolve many vexing health issues before resorting to pharmaceutical medications.
Most people who seek out Functional Medicine practitioners have already navigated traditional medical approaches without success. Some come because they wish to optimize their health and are willing to do the work. In either case, it is important to understand that this is not a “quick fix”. There is no single medication that will solve all the problems. We will work together to understand what caused your health to decline and learn step by step how to resolve those issues.
I do not provide primary care.Each patient needs to have their own primary care provider. I can supplement that with a Functional Medicine approach in partnership with the patient.
Depending on the complexity of a case, I spend at least an hour researching and reviewing data for every hour I am with a patient. The functional medicine approach is time consuming and does not fit into the traditional models of medical care. For this reason, I do not accept health insurance. I recognize that some patients struggle to pay medical and health expenses. Therefore, in some cases, I can offer reduced fees for those who are not able to pay.