What is the Functional Medicine Approach
My Mission
At Oliver Health and Wellness, my mission is to empower individuals with cardiovascular or cardiometabolic disease to take control of their health and wellness through education, support, and personalized care. I believe that everyone has the potential to live a vibrant and fulfilling life, and I'm here to help them achieve that goal using functional medicine.
Functional Medicine = Understanding of Traditional Medicine + Training in Holistic Medicine
Functional medicine focuses on understanding the individual and all the events, big and small, that have led to their current health status. This includes everything from what medications was your mother on when you were in utero to what do you eat on a daily basis. These seemingly minute factors play a large role on health, and functional medicine recognizes that. Through relentless curiosity combined with functional medicine testing that goes beyond what your traditional doctor would order, a functional medicine trained health care provider can appropriately determine what exactly is driving your particular symptoms--and develop a plan to address it. Through targeted lifestyle interventions, dietary recommendations, fitness programs, and individualized supplement protocols, Oliver Health and Wellness creates the ultimate wellness protocol designed to optimize your current health journey.
Traditional medicine is symptom suppression -- Functional medicine is symptom resolution through root cause investigation.
Why Traditional Medicine is Failing You
As someone who has worked in critical care, I absolutely agree that traditional medicine is necessary and saves lives. There is no supplement out there that can take the place of a breathing tube. There are, however, many actions that can be taken to prevent needing a breathing tube in the first place.
Traditional medicine, especially in terms of chronic disease, focuses on symptom suppression--not solution. If you have an inflammatory disorder, like eczema, IBS/IBD, or lupus, the traditional medicine approach will give you anti-inflammatories but will fail to ask the question "why is this person inflamed?". If you have high cholesterol, or high blood sugar, the traditional medicine approach would have you take a medication to bring those numbers down without investigating why the body has intelligently raised them.
At Oliver Health and Wellness, we are about finding solutions for you, not suppressing your symptoms.
Got questions?
My Exact Method
If you choose to work with me, you can expect this exact method to be taken:
- In depth personal assessment to understand how your health has gotten to this point
- Targeted functional medicine testing when absolutely indicated. Unlike other clinics that will test the same things on every single one of their clients, I do not believe that "more" = "better". I will only test if I absolutely believe it will change the course of our wellness protocol.
- Frequent feedback. Aside from scheduled check ins, I want to truly know how you're doing in the day-to-day. If you're a client of mine, you can text or email me at any time and receive a reply within 24-48 hrs.
- Real connection. The best outcomes are when the clinician and the client are working together to achieve the desired goal. I am not here to be your salvation. I am here to provide you with the necessary tools to heal yourself and guide you along the way.
- Lots of education. I do not want you to work 12 months with me and not understand anything about your particular health problem/problems. My goal is to educate you along the way so that when our time is done, you have confidence in taking charge of your health.