A More Natural Approach To
Health & Wellness
Your wellness plan should be as unique as you are, and the treatment shouldn't add to your symptoms. That's why we personalize every protocol for overcoming your health challenges. To best support your body's healing, we take the best of conventional medicine and pair it with the knowledge & testing of functional medicine. Wondering what that means and why it's necessary for your health? Take a peak below.
Understanding Integrative & Functional Medicine
What is Functional Medicine?
Functional Medicine is a science-based approach to finding the underlying cause of your symptoms. Instead of placing a band-aid on the problem, functional medicine takes a deep dive into your health history, lifestyle, diet, genetics, and lab results to find lingering deficiencies, imbalances, toxicities, or infections that are preventing you from getting well. From there, a custom wellness plan is created to fit your unique needs. You will receive manageable nutrition and lifestyle tweaks, personalized supplementation, tangible health education, and structured support to create lasting wellness.
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Part of what makes Functional medicine so unique is that the focus is on you. You’ve probably noticed that most doctor’s appointments don’t last more than 15 minutes. How are doctors able to get a detailed history and provide a proper plan for you moving forward when they don’t have time to listen to your full story, future health goals, and answer all your questions? With us, each appointment is at least 1 hour to provide us enough time to hear your concerns, answer plenty of questions, and create a plan together that works for you. Wellness protocols are created with the goal of getting you better, not guessing at diagnoses and hiding symptoms behind more pills. Your protocol will focus on healing your gut, balancing your hormones, optimizing your sleep and stress, improving your nutritional intake, reducing toxins, boosting your immune system, creating manageable movement routines, and more. Functional medicine empowers you to confidently support your body and take control of your health.
What is Conventional Medicine?
Conventional medicine, which is most doctors you see within the healthcare system, focuses more on diagnosing you with a disease that fits some of your symptoms. Then, you are given medications that are typically prescribed for anyone that receives that same diagnosis.
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Conventional medicine’s focus is to find a name for how you feel, and providing pills to suppress the symptoms you are experiencing. Most Western Doctor’s aren’t given the time or incentive to ask “why are you feeling this way?”, “what is going on in your life right now that might be contributing to these symptoms that we can address without medicine?”, or “what can we do to prevent this from being a problem for you in a year from now?”. Instead of digging deep and cutting the problem off at the source, you will often receive quick fixes that aren’t tailored to your unique situation. This can lead to the underlying problems becoming worse, receiving multiple diagnosis that are not completely correct, handfuls of medications, and several side effects that complicate the situation even further.
How is Functional Medicine Different Than Conventional Medicine?
Although they both aim to make you feel better, functional medicine does so long term by finding the cause of your problems and helping your body heal. Conventional medicine makes you feel better short term by handing out medications to suppress any pain or discomfort, allowing whatever is causing the problem to continue without it interrupting your day (for the time being). Although this may seem favorable now, covering up symptoms may lead to further problems down the road. It also doesn’t answer the question “where are these symptoms coming from?”. The other biggest differences between the two are:
Appointment Times: Conventional medicine has time restrictions due to health insurance, usually giving them only 15 minutes to see you. Functional medicine works outside of insurance, allowing us to spend an hour or more meeting with you.
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Treatment: Conventional medicine often puts many different people on the same medication regardless of their unique differences. Functional medicine looks to personalize every protocol. Your wellness plan should be as unique as you are.
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First Lines of Defense: Conventional medicine often jumps to medication as the first answer. The upside to that is that you often see immediate results. However, the problem is that the cause of the symptoms are often not being addressed. This can lead to worsening health down the road with even more symptoms. Functional medicine first looks to modify your diet, lifestyle, and emotional state to begin transforming your health. Although these interventions may take longer to see affects, they don’t come with side effects and provide lasting relief.
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Patient Education: There is only so much information conventional medicine doctors can share with you in 15 minutes. Part of taking control of your health is receiving proper education and tools about your body and disease states to know how to support your wellbeing. Functional Medicine emphasizes education to empower you to take control of your health long after you leave our office.
How The Body Is Viewed: If you’ve had multiple disease states, you often have to see multiple specialists. Although someone with expertise in a medical field is helpful, it can be harmful to treat each area of the body separately. One condition can have many causes, or one cause could create many conditions throughout the body. When seeing a specialist who only takes one part of your body into consideration at a time, an overall picture is often missed. Functional medicine looks at your body as a whole. We understand that when one part of your body is hurting, it will often show through multiple symptoms. This prevents over-prescribing and over-complicating the cause of your symptoms.
Why Does Bio-Individuality Matter For My Treatment?
First things first, what is bio-individuality?
Bio-individuality refers to your body's unique response to it's environment and internal workings. This includes everything from your metabolism and insulin production to nutritional needs and the medication side effects you may experience. Your body works and responds differently than anyone else, which is why a one-size-fits-all approach to your health isn't going to properly meet your body's needs to function the way that it was meant to.
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To make sure you are getting exactly what your body requires, nothing extra or insufficient, we individualize your wellness plan to your biology. To do this, we understand your typical diet, lifestyle and emotional state, as well as your genetics and current health status from your labs. We take all of this into consideration and create a plan that fits your body and life circumstances. We then walk along side you with regularly scheduled visits, messaging support between appointments, and easy to follow education tools that allow you (and your biology) to thrive.
Why Do We Run Labs?
Labs provide us with answers to what is currently going on inside your body. Symptoms can often be very general, leaving many doctors forced to use trial and error as your treatment plan. We test in order to understand what your symptoms mean, how to best support your body 's healing, and what needs the most attention. There is no guessing with labs - they interpret what your body has been trying to tell us.
Okay, now I understand that labs will provide vital information to my healing, but how do I know WHICH LABS to get?
Knowing which labs will provide you with the most relevant information requires a deep understanding of how your symptoms, health history, and current environment intertwine. Having an educated provider with experience and in-depth knowledge of each lab test is the best way to receive useful results. That is why we do a thorough intake with you BEFORE suggesting which labs to order. You will be able to order with confidence because we explain how each suggested lab will be helpful to your healing.
Advanced Functional Medicine Lab Testing
Symptoms tell us that your body is in need of help, but they don't always tell us exactly where the help is needed. To create the best wellness plan that accurately addresses your symptoms, we test instead of guess. Below are the main Advanced Functional Medicine Tests we offer.
If necessary, we are able to provide more specialized testing than shown below. If you don't see the lab tests you are looking for, send us a message so we can discuss how we can best help you & our alternative testing options.
Food Sensitivity Test
This test will identify your specific food reactions, signs of gut inflammation, and potential candida overgrowth.
GI - Stool Test
A stool test will show us if your body is harboring any parasites, H. Pylori, bacteria and fungal overgrowth, gastrointestinal inflammation, or digestive dysfunction.
Organic Acid Test (OAT)
The OAT test will tell us about your metabolism & enzymatic function, genetic markers, bacteria, yeast, and fungus overgrowth, mold toxicity, as well as your amino acid, vitamin, and mineral use.
Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis Test (HTMA)
The HTMA identifies vitamin and mineral deficiencies, heavy metal toxicities, and your oxidizing rate.
Adrenal Hormone Test
This test will show how well your adrenals are currently functioning by looking at your cortisol production over a 24 hour period, as well as your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and more.
Thyroid - Adrenal Hormone Test
This test will do everything the Adrenal Hormone test does, as well as looking at your Insulin resistance & thyroid function through measuring your insulin, Hemoglobin A1C, TSH, Free T3, Free T4, and Thyroid Antibodies.
Omega 3 Test
Our omega-3 test will indicate if your omega-3 to omega-6 intake is sufficient, as well as your needed EPA & DHA levels, and mortality rating based on your total omega-3 intake.
Specialized Lab Tests
For those in need of more specific answers or complex health concerns, specialized labs are available upon request. These labs are not included in the price of our packages.
Please note: New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island have state laws that do not allow residents to do any at home lab testing. If you live in one of those states, we can still work with you , but we cannot order any at home labs for you at this time (and neither can anyone else, unfortunately).
