Understanding the Functional Medicine Approach to your health will explain why our partnership is so very different from what you experience with a conventional medicine doctor.  In order to get to the root cause of your health problems, we need to group your symptoms into body systems then look at which systems are the most out-of-balance and why.  This can be due to genetic imbalances, trauma, bereavement, stress, injury, illness, psycho-emotional issues and many other factors.  For this reason, we will spend a great deal of time laying out the pieces of this jigsaw into your Functional Medicine Timeline and Functional Medicine Matrix and you will see ow this is a highly personalized approach to your healthcare strategy.

Healthie is the platform I have selected for you to use to schedule, cancel or re-arrange your appointments, ut it offers far more than just that.  We will have secure video conferencing and chat facilities for consultations or quick advice, I can post your lab results, meal plans, useful videos and reading material, goal setting reminders, FitBit integration and exercise charting, online courses and webinars.  Watch the video to find out more.

Once you have booked your initial consultation or transformation package, you will be sent 3 very detailed questionnaires to complete.  This will take you some time and you may need to go and find out some information from parents, family members etc.  The more information you can provide, the more thoroughly we can investigate your health issues. I will then spend some considerable time organizing this information into a timeline and investigating what the triggers are for your symptoms, what mediates or facilitates them and what may be predisposing you to them.  By the time we have our first 1:1 session, we will discuss the ‘story’ of your health and what has led you to where you are today.  There will always be more information that comes to light during this consultation so please remember, this is very much about us collaborating and investigating everything.  It is a marathon, not a sprint, but having it laid out in such an organized way helps us to spot patterns together and also to see the general direction your health is taking so that we can use it as a preventative tool as well.  All our sessions, plans and interactions will be logged on there to keep it current.  Because you will be sent the report, you will also be able to share this information with any other healthcare providers you choose to work with so you don’t have to keep repeating your situation.

Although I will not be your primary medical carer, I will be the point of contact that can facilitate continuity of care if you want me to work with the rest of your healthcare team.

Once I have created your functional medicine timeline, I will move on to arranging it into what is called the Functional Medicine Matrix.  Together these will form the working documents for our treatment plans.  The matrix is a visual representation of 7 main body systems so you will be able to see which system each of your symptoms falls under and hence which key body system is most out of balance.  This means that instead of treating symptoms, I will focus on whichever system is most out of balance, so that we can get to the root cause of your health problems as well as optimize (or biohack) your body for optimal physical and mental performance.

Functional lab tests allow us to see what is happening in your body at a cellular level because the changes happen here much earlier than they do at a structural level.  This means that when you go to your GP complaining of certain symptoms, the anatomical tests such as a colonoscopy, X-ray etc may not show any symptoms at this stage.  Functional testing, by contrast, shows systemic changes far earlier.  The ability to see what is happening at a cellular level or ‘behind-the-scenes’ as I refer to it, is a powerful diagnostic tool that can not only shed light on your current symptoms, but it gives us information on your underlying health even BEFORE your symptoms arise.  Genome testing is another way we can understand your health and use your nutrition and lifestyle to lessen the likelihood of unwanted genes being triggered, even if something runs in your family.

The lab tests and investigation tools I use are informative, but what really matters is how YOU feel during and after our time working together.  For this reason, I use the World health Organization PROMIS framework so we can gauge the effect of your treatment on your quality of life.  PROMIS stands for Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Information System. This is a  dynamic tool to gauge your overall wellbeing and quality of life.  Typically I would run this assessment quarterly depending upon how long we are working together.