The Functional Medicine Process

Your commitment to making changes cannot be overstated: From experience, one of the biggest success factors for making meaningful progress is a strong desire to make positive changes in your life. More importantly, you need to follow through in making a commitment to those changes. Those who don't follow through are generally not successful. If you have that strong desire, and commit to making healthy choices and changes, then you have won half the battle. Clients who make those lifestyle changes frequently see some of the most amazing changes. (link to success stories)
If you have the desire and determination to make those changes and stick to them, then you are ready for step 2.
The comprehensive health background questionnaire: This Questionnaire is the starting point and foundation for the rest of the process. This will not only document, in as much detail as possible your current and past health concerns and symptoms, but will be the main instrument to help pinpoint the root causes of the issues. It is through this instrument that details, which may seem insignificant, help fill in missing pieces of your personal health puzzle. The more detailed the answers, the more clues there will be to work with. This will help to define and delineate the areas of the body's system that need attention and will help form the personalized recommendations for your specific situation.
Diet Diary: The journal keeps track of everything consumed over a 7 day period along with notes on sleep patterns, emotional state, and other relevant information. This can help reveal potential food sensitivities, triggers, unhealthy eating patterns, and other bits of invaluable data. Several clients have improved tremendously from the morsels (small pun intended) gleaned from their diet diary.
Gather past medical records: Having past records with any information that could lend insight to your current health status along with any previous blood tests, treatments, etc. is very helpful in developing the bigger picture of your situation.
Initial meeting: This is where we spend most of our time. This is not the 5 to 10 minute visit to which you may have become accustomed. This will be a very focused, in depth, active listening session. During these initial meetings, which can run from 2 to 3 hours, we take the time to dig deep by reviewing your diet diary, previous records, and health questionnaire. Your questionnaire will be reviewed with you to ensure that it is as complete and as accurate as possible. We will then drill down on responses that we find intriguing, even if to you they seem mundane. Often times, what clients think are insignificant details, are actually very important clues leading to meaningful revelations.
Lab Work: If you do not have recent lab work from your doctor, there are several walk-in labs in the area where you can get lab work done. In addition to establishing baseline numbers and being a quantitative measure of your current condition, testing is extremely helpful in creating an individual, customized and targeted program while removing a great deal of guess work.
Follow-up meeting: After lab work results are available, this information will be combined with the information collected from the health questionnaire, diet diary, and 2 hour in-depth interview to develop a personalized and unique strategy for getting to the root cause of your concerns and helping you make meaningful improvements in your health.
Recommendations: These will focus first and foremost on removing any items identified as being harmful to your health. This could be bacterial overgrowth, yeast infections, food sensitivities, environmental toxins, stress, poor sleep patterns, etc. Anything identified as possibly having a negative impact on your personal health will be covered. Next, we will work on a diet that will address potential sensitivities, digestive issues, and reduce exposure to exotoxins. Finally, recommendations for nutraceuticals and supplementation to help support the body's immune, detoxification, and restorative systems. Everything will be specially designed around your very individual needs to target necessary changes in your lifestyle habits. We will help you work toward and support maximizing your body's systems for innate healing.
Follow-up: Generally 30 days later, a follow-up meeting is recommended if you have been diligently following protocols. This will give us an opportunity to evaluate how well the recommended changes are working, chart any changes, and make adjustments as needed to ensure your continued progress.