CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, health is not obtained in the conventional medical settings. Doctors, emergency rooms and hospitals have their place but if you are healthy, you shouldn’t need them all to often!

OPTIMAL HEALTH STARTS AT HOME!

Prevention of disease, treatment of most chronic illnesses and optimizing your overall wellbeing as you age is obtained through mental and spiritual awareness, physical fitness and adequate nutrition. The great news is that despite your financial or insurance situation, you can begin to change your life and health today.

WHATS THE CATCH?

The catch is that living healthfully is not intuitive and can be confusing and challenging! Most of us aren’t aware of the habits that lead to disease and when we do know what to do, it is hard to make a change. I became a doctor because I wanted to figure out how to obtain optimal health and then help others find their way as well.

WHERE DOES CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE FALL SHORT?

As a medical doctor, I noticed that the medical community at large wasn’t focusing on curing disease or maintaining health. Our medical system is focused more on the downstream effects of diagnosing disease and prescribing medications and surgeries rather than addressing issues of prevention, nutrition, fitness and stress, which are the backbone of health. In addition, the culture of our current medical system would have you believe that conventional medicine is the only researched and valid approach to health. This is false and relying solely of current mainstream medical practice can in fact make you worse off. There is a place for your everyday medical school trained doctor, pharmaceuticals, hospitals and the like but these approaches should really be an adjunct and not the first line to health and wellness.

WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE?

To get good information in these areas you may have to look outside of mainstream medicine.  Such areas include “Integrative and Holistic Medicine”, “Mind body Medicine”, “Complementary and Alternative Medicine”, “Lifestyle or Behavioral Medicine”, “Nutritional Medicine” “Eastern Medicine”, “Functional Medicine”, “Naturopathic Medicine” to name a few. Each of these fields and others offer great research and resources to promote health and wellness. This site will integrate some of the key topics for health promotion from all of these fields as well as conventional medicine.

Saying Good Bye to The “Majic Bullet”

One of the most important aspects of Integrative and Functional Medicine is understanding that healing through this model of medicine is almost completely opposite from the conventional model. In the conventional model, we have become accustomed to the idea that there is one answer for every problem. I call this “a pill for every ill” model. Both doctors and patients both have this expectation and it is the first concept that I have to get my patients to abandon. When patients come to me they often expect that I am going to prescribe a majic bullet to solve there problem but because I practice “natural” medicine they think that instead of giving them a pharmaceutical to fix there problem I will give them a single herb or natural supplement. This is not how true healing works. There are no magic bullets in true health. The body is complex and requires a multilayered approach which will often involve total lifestyle changes on the part of the patient. Do I use natural supplements, herbs, essential oils? Yes and I also use pharmaceuticals when necessary, but these are all in combination with a number of other modalities that all work together to optimize your bodies healing capacity. It is important that you understand this when speaking out an alternative practitioner.