Functional Medicine and Nutritional Therapy San Rafael, CA

Functional Medicine

Functional medicine integrates the best that alternative approaches and conventional Western medicine offer. Like traditional Chinese medicine, functional medicine is patient-centered, not disease oriented. It views and treats the body as a network of complex systems continually interacting, affecting, and cooperating to prevent disease, recover from illness, and achieve and maintain optimal vitality and health.

As a functional medicine practitioner, I treat the whole person. I work with them in therapeutic partnership to alleviate and heal their conditions and restore them to optimal vitality and health. I listen to their histories and explore a wide range of factors affecting their lives that may be contributing to their ailments. Understanding health as a dynamic balance of internal and external factors, I take their emotional/psychological dispositions, lifestyle habits, unique life circumstances, genetic factors, and relevant personal and environmental particulars into account.

Because I specialize in food sensitivities and allergies, autoimmunity, hormone imbalances and digestive ailments, I work with state-of-the-art laboratories like Lab Corp, Cyrex Labs, Diagnos-Techs, Diagnostic Solutions and Genova Labs. To confirm or clarify my diagnoses. I may order blood, saliva, stool, and urine lab tests.

The foundation of my practice is a profound recognition of, and respect for, the body’s innate intelligence and healing powers. My primary purpose in all I do as a functional medicine practitioner is designed to support and enhance the body’s natural healing functions and powers, and to help each patient learn to do the same.

Nutritional Therapy

In the last few decades we’ve seen the progressive and dramatic decline and contamination of our food system. Many people, insufficiently aware of these changes, continue to eat a conventional diet filled with toxic chemical additives, preservatives, flavor enhancers, pesticides and genetically modified ingredients.

Educating patients about our compromised food system is a key first step in nutritional therapy. When you know which foods are healthy or toxic, and know the health benefits of various foods and food combinations, you can make healthy dietary choices that support your body, mind and quality of life.

Our compromised, nutritionally depleted food system makes it difficult to derive all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals your body requires. So, nutritional therapy is increasingly important in recovering and maintaining optimal health and vitality. Nutritional therapy incorporates highly specialized nutritional formulations of vitamins, herbs, antioxidants and minerals that support and enhance your body’s ability to transform food into energy, reduce inflammation, balance blood sugar levels, optimize the elimination of wastes and toxins, strengthen immune system, and facilitate general circulation. Nutritional Therapy also uses lab tests to assess the state of your digestive system and your microbiome, on which your health ultimately depends.

For all these reasons, I recommend eating organic food exclusively, and eliminating all processed, chemical- and sugar-filled, and genetically modified foods from your diet. I help patients begin from wherever they are in their dietary habits, to make necessary improvements and changes in their dietary choices. People are often initially reluctant or resistant to making these changes. But when they see and feel the qualitative improvements in their health and vitality, they become motivated. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing patients recognize the value of rigorous self-care, develop healthy lifestyle habits, and transform their bodies, their health, and their lives.