Functional Medicine

If you can identify with one or several of the statements below, our services may be the perfect solution. This is who we help best!

• Individuals who have a desire to optimize their genes through nutrition, lifestyle, and supplements.

• Individuals who feel bloated, especially after eating, have digestive distress, pain, reflux, constipation and/or diarrhea and want to improve their digestive and immune systems.

• Women who feel fatigued, stressed, depressed or overweight and want to feel alive again (have you forgotten what "good" feels like?).

• Athletes who want to design an ideal training program based upon present nutritional and hormonal status (e.g. is this your year to do the "big" race or should you wait a year until your adrenals and hormones are in a better place?).

• People who are willing to work to find natural solutions to their body's rhythm and metabolism rather than popping pills to suppress symptoms.

What services do we offer?

If you become a patient or client of Renew Functional Nutrition, there are several ways that we can work together.

• Personal one-on-one treatment.  Treatment always starts with a very intensive set of questions and a history. This generally takes 45-60 minutes. Together we will chart your course, pinpoint which lab testing might be beneficial in helping us better understand the root of your dysfunction and the course of your care. The length of treatment is completely dependent upon your state of health. If your case is not complex, it may only take 2-3 months. However, while complex cases can take 6 months to a year to completely reverse, relief of symptoms often occurs fairly quickly after treatment begins.

• Health Coaching. My team includes several health coaches to help you achieve the goals that together we determine are necessary in order for your health, whether dietary, lifestyle or change of habits and attitude.

• Zoom or phone consultations. We offer distance consultations for individual clients wanting counseling on nutrition and lifestyle factors, how they interact with your genes and how you can use them to improve your health. Distance consultations are also possible for patients who have visited our office for their initial examination.

Would you like to SCHEDULE A FREE 20-MINUTE CONSULTATION to decide whether working with us might be beneficial? Please click the box Below and register to take the online health assessment, so we can help determine if we will be a good fit.

What do we do?

We help you optimize the functions of your body in order to achieve and maintain health. Daily stresses (physical, emotional, mental, food irritants, chemical substances, noise, etc.) take a toll on all of our body systems. Each of those systems works together in a beautiful synergy to keep us strong, energetic and healthy. When one is strained, the others try to "pick up" to keep you going. The strain on one system leads to strain on the others and you start to lose energy, pick up the common colds a little easier, recover less quickly from physical activity, etc.

We practice functional medicine, which is personalized medicine. There are no two people that receive the same treatment even if they have the same diagnosis because everyone has an "individual story"-- the way their body got to this current state of dysfunction.

We help remove what caused the imbalance and provide what creates balance. BUT, this is a partnership. We help the patient to identify what caused the imbalance, help them identify ways that they are willing to work to create the balance and monitor the improvement along the way. If a patient is unwilling to dig deep, uncover some hurts, change some unhealthy habits and work to get better...it won't work. This is not symptom suppression (a pill, potion or cream to help you mask the problem), this is health promotion!

Let's use an example of a patient suffering the following symptoms: sadness, hopelessness, no interest in life, no desire for sex, can't get out of bed. Society has named this "depression." But depression is not the cause of these symptoms, it is the name of these symptoms. Medicine has confused this. If the disease name is "x", the treatment is "y" and everybody gets put on the same medication. Did you know over 30 things (including medication itself) can cause these symptoms? The cause for each person can be very, very different and that is what we work to uncover.

Why do we need functional medicine?

• Our society is experiencing a sharp increase in the number of people who suffer from complex, chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, mental illness and autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis.

• The system of medicine practiced by most physicians is oriented toward acute care, the diagnosis and treatment of trauma or illness that is of short duration and in need of urgent care, such as appendicitis or a broken leg. Physicians apply specific, prescribed treatment such as drugs or surgery that aim to treat the immediate problem or symptom.

• Unfortunately, the acute-care approach to medicine lacks the proper methodology and tools for preventing and treating complex, chronic disease. In most cases it does not take into account the unique genetic makeup of each individual or factors such as environmental exposures to toxins and the aspects of today's lifestyle that have a direct influence on the rise in chronic disease in modern Western society.

• There's a huge gap between research and the way doctors practice. The gap between emerging research in basic sciences and integration into medical practice is enormous -- as long as 50 years -- particularly in the area of complex, chronic illness.

• Most physicians are not adequately trained to assess the underlying causes of complex, chronic disease and to apply strategies such as nutrition, diet, and exercise to both treat and prevent these illnesses in their patients.

How is functional medicine different?

Functional medicine involves understanding the origins, prevention, and treatment of complex, chronic disease. Hallmarks of a function medicine approach include:

• Patient-centered care. The focus of functional medicine is on patient-centered care, promoting health as a positive vitality, beyond just the absence of disease. By listening to the patient and learning his or her story, the practitioner brings the patient into the discovery process and tailors treatments that address the individual's unique needs.

• An integrative, science-based healthcare approach. Functional medicine practitioners look "upstream" to consider the complex web of interactions in the patient's history, physiology, and lifestyle that can lead to illness. The unique genetic makeup of each patient is considered, along with both internal (mind, body, and spirit) and external (physical and social environment) factors that affect total functioning.

• Integrating best medical practices. Functional medicine integrates traditional Western medical practices with what is sometimes considered "alternative" or "integrative" medicine, creating a focus on prevention through nutrition, diet, and exercise; use of the latest laboratory testing and other diagnostic techniques; and prescribed combinations of drugs and/or botanical medicines, supplements, therapeutic diets, detoxification programs, or stress-management techniques.

The goal of Functional Medicine is to help you improve the quality of your life: feel passion rather than pain daily, increase energy, achieve optimal weight naturally and age with vitality. Sound too good to be true? It’s not!

“They” lied! It’s not normal to decrease energy and have interrupted sleep as you age. But to find your energy again, it’s not about popping a pill, drinking “energy” drinks or finding the fountain of youth. The fountain of youth is bubbling inside of you…trying to find its way out! Releasing it is a matter of discharging years of baggage, previous traumas (both physical and emotional), nourishing your soul…and your cells.

 I found a doctor friend who worked with me, using functional medicine principles, to not just treat my symptoms, but to find out what happened to my body that made those symptoms rear their ugly head. We treated nutritional deficiencies, cellular damage caused by chronic stress, toxicity overload and more. This led me on a path of wanting to know why…why did these things happen? The world of nutrigenomics, the study of the effect of food and food constituents on gene expression, opened my eyes and allowed me to further heal my body and optimize my genes.

I am living proof that there are answers out there! But we must learn to listen to our bodies and demand answers.

“Functional medicine is, simply put, the science of creating health.” – Mark Hyman, MD

Through comprehensive laboratory analyses, we identify and treat the cause of the disorders, beyond the symptoms. We are trained and certified in the practice of functional medicine and have seen extraordinary results in hundreds of our patient’s already.

If you are not feeling your best it is not “In your head!” You are not “Crazy!” or just “Getting old.”

Some of the laboratory testing agencies we utilize include:

• RUPA LABS

• LabCorp & Quest Diagnostics– comprehensive blood analysis

• DiagnosTechs– extensive adrenal and hormonal saliva testing

• Genova Diagnostics– advanced digestive, infectious and immune testing

You CAN expect to wake up refreshed and energized.  Nutrition, understanding how vitamins, minerals, enzymes, phytochemicals, antioxidants, and more, interact with our cells to produce life-giving energy and vitality is not something taught in conventional medical school and not researched by pharmaceutical, chemical and large agricultural companies. So…we have been wrong to think our conventional doctors would understand this.

Nutrition, all “food,” talks to our cells and, together with lifestyle, can create disease OR create health. That’s right! The information (through food) that we send our cells can over-ride damage. It can even turn OFF inherited genes (keep them from ever expressing themselves).

I am so proud and excited to be part of a movement that is bringing true health and healing to patients across the globe. Don’t settle for lifelong pills and hormonal replacement before you learn what you can do to reverse the damage that caused them to become necessary. It’s never too late! Let’s work together to turn back the clock and unleash the real you.

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