Modern medicine centers around the treatment of discomforts associated with current dis-ease. Our country is over-whelmed with chronic disease and for a plethora of reasons, our healthcare system has become more of a "sick-care system," than one that really offers healthcare. The average primary care physician spends six minutes in a clinic visit listening to your concerns, devising a plan, and then educating you on that plan while offering you a prescription. Functional medicine has evolved to address the oversights of conventional medicine in that it's intention is to go deeper than the prescription that is really only providing temporary relief, and discover what the root cause is so that dis-ease can be resolved.
There is a saying in functional medicine, that if you step on a tack it will take a lot of aspirin to make the pain go away. Functional medicine works to identify and resolve the tack. While I have an enormous passion for functional medicine and utilize this mindset when serving clients with dis-ease in my practice, I also feel that this mindset remains primarily disease-oriented or a defensive strategy. My hope is to work with clients in all stages of their journey and help move them into a state of optimal wellness before they discover dis-ease. My hope is that we can move through life, even through difficult transitions and into our most advanced years, with great vitality.
Wellness-based care, in my mind, means investing in self-care and making a conscious effort to work towards one's best, or most favorite, self. This is more successful in a like-minded community, so I offer a courses with forums so we can encourage one another and offer each other accountability. This is as much my own commitment to my health as it is my desire to serve others.
As a licensed clinician however, I can prescribe when appropriate, order laboratory and diagnostic testing, and offer diagnostics and medical forms as necessary. My integrative training allows me to reach into modalities beyond pharmaceuticals, and my functional training allows me to dive into an underlying cause. As a wellness focused practitioner, I am not settled until you feel good - emotionally and physically.