What is Functional Medicine?
Are you a great fit to work with us? 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.
Who would NOT be a good fit to work with us?
Someone who needs a quick fix and is not willing to be patient while we unwind the years of damage in your body.
Someone who is unwilling to make changes to their present food and activity habits.
Someone who does not believe that food, nutritional supplements and activity can create health in your body (if you don't believe it, you certainly won't work for it!).
What services do we offer?
If you become a patient of Renew Functional Medicine, 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.
Virtual consultations. We offer 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. We primarily work with clients within Michigan.
Who needs 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
Some of the laboratory testing agencies we utilize include:
GI Map
SIBO Breath Test
Comprehensive nutritional evaluation
Food sensitivity testing
Quest Diagnostics– comprehensive blood analysis
Extensive adrenal and hormonal saliva testing
Genova Diagnostics– advanced digestive, infectious and immune testing
Dutch labs
Boston Heart
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.