Functional Medicine is a personalized approach to health, rather than focusing on symptoms, we focus on root cause resolution to those symptoms. We acknowledge the innate way our body and brain was originally designed and how it is structured to function as a whole. Our comprehensive approach can help you reduce and/or eliminate stress, sleep disturbances, pain, brain fog, weight, fatigue, hormonal imbalances, and emotional and addictive behaviors.
First things first, this is not just about nutrition, but instead it’s about how nutrition is needed so our body and brain function optimally, Nutrition is at the core of optimal health. With that being said, considering your current nutritional habits is one of the first steps to address. Rest assured, this does not mean you are going to be handed a do not touch list. Instead we are going to work closely with you in order to figure out what foods may be causing your symptoms, hence “personalized nutrition.” Next we will take it slowly, one step at a time if necessary. We believe and have experienced radical deliverance of addictions and emotional struggles. However, it doesn’t always occur in this manner. Therefore, we understand for many – recovery is a step by step process, and that’s okay too. The most important thing is your level of commitment to your own recovery. You are the only one that has the power to follow through, especially when it is hard. And rest assured we will be there to support you every step of the way. We will not give up on you.
Nutritional Counseling:
Our nutritional recommendations are considerably different than traditional nutritional recommendation. A Clinical Nutritionist’s approach to nutrition is one that considers a combination of dietary balance, life-style modifications, the use of nutritional supplements and nutraceutical (wholefoods) substances, and often other adjunctive modalities such as herbs. We often utilize functional nutritional laboratory testing, not for the purpose of disease diagnosis, but to establish optimal versus sub-optimal levels of function in the body related to ones individual nutritional status. We first consider a persons individual story, a comprehensive health history, and functional testing as needed. These may include, but not limited to hair analysis, urine, saliva, blood, and/or stool test. Nutrient status is a key factor in establishing a starting point. These tests are very helpful in considering what types of food may be more beneficial for a person, over another food. We also utilize the elimination diet to determine food sensitivities. The elimination diet is one that is considered “Gold Standard” without having to utilize functional medicine testing. The elimination diet will help us to determine any certain foods that the individual may be sensitive to. This approach is the most affordable, but it can be rather difficult, because one is typically asked to eliminate certain known sensitive foods from their diet for a certain period of time. This does not mean one has to eliminate these foods forever, even if we find there is in deed a sensitivity to these foods. What it does mean, is possibly having to eliminate them for a time being, before adding them back in slowly. Once we are able to restore the digestive tract it is often found that many people can add the sensitive foods back into their diet successfully. The key point with food sensitivities’ is that it is too often missed. There is overwhelming evidence that certain foods; for some people are connected to various addictive behaviors and emotional struggles.
We focus on a whole foods nutrient dense diet that truly nourishes the entire body. This type of diet is actually more of a lifestyle shift, a shift to help each client to personalize their diet in an effort to address and support their body’s biochemical and nutritional needs. These dietary recommendations can be designed to support gastro-intestinal healing, detoxification needs, immune system support, weight loss, exercise recovery, mental clarity, emotional stability, elimination and/or reduction of addictive cravings, as well as reduction of inflammation and hormonal imbalances. Our recommendations evolve throughout the nutritional counseling process by utilizing the extensive amount of biochemistry information available through science, your personal extensive health history, your body’s reaction to the lifestyle shift and personal feed back. Therefore, its an ever changing process that may require readjustments to the initial recommendations.
Below is some information to help you understand some of the areas of concern we consider.
Many people, including some health professionals negate the importance of nutrition and/or issues with the digestive system as being the underling root cause to an addiction and/or emotional struggle. However, they are more interconnected than one may possibly think they would be. This is why at the core of what we do nutritionally is to consider what is going on in the digestive region of the individual first. We discuss this a little more in detail on the gut-brain connection page.
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Lifestyle Counseling:
Anyone who struggles with or works with those who struggle with addiction and neurobiological disorders also realize there is a multifactorial need in approaching a successful recovery program that may require complex solutions. This is fundamentally the foundation of the bio-individual approach that works for anyone. Furthermore, by taking a multifactorial concept and incorporating the bio-individual approach that considers the “whole-person” is a key factor for addressing the underlying root cause(s). Therefore, lifestyle and environmental factors are important components to consider. This is part of the science behind epigenetics and how they have an incredibly huge impact on the health of the human body. It is imperative to consider how “interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease.” (Dr. Jeffery Bland, Founder of IFM).
Lifestyle factors may include physical exercise and activity level, smoking, substance use, social and community activities, relationships, sleeping patterns, and other life stressors. See the Seven Steps of a Well-balanced Life for more information for our approach to a well-balanced life. Environmental factors are heavy metal toxicity, exposure to toxicants in ones everyday environment, such as mold, herbicides, pesticides, body care products, house-hold products, parabens, among many others. The functional medicine test can also address many of these potential underling problems successfully, along with right nutrition and lifestyle protocol. For more information visit Genetic & Metabolic Tests Interpretation.