Your first experience with Functional Medicine may be a little different than your past doctor appointments.

 

Functional Medicine is about treating the individual patient, so the first visit is learning about you. To get to the bottom of your chief concerns, we need to know your personal history (what events lead up to getting you to our office), past medical history (who's looked at you before, what did they measure, what was tried, what worked/what didn't), your family history, what you eat, how you sleep, how's your gut, energy level, brain function, exercise routine, living/work environment, daily stressors, etc.  Be sure to bring a list of all medication and supplements you are currently taking. Medication dosing is important. The brand of supplement is also useful for us to know - many patients find it easiest to line everything up on the counter and take a picture of the front and back of all their bottles.

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THE FIRST VISIT GENERALLY TAKES ABOUT AN HOUR

 

After your first visit, we're on a fact finding mission.  We don't need to reinvent the wheel - if you've had labs/studies done in the recent past, please bring those results along.  We will fill in the blanks with labs determined at your first appointment.  Depending on time, we might discuss what could be going on and some possible treatment options depending on what we find with the labs.  Sometimes a problem and solution are clear right from the start.  If that's the case, we can make some initial treatment suggestions at your first visit.  It typically takes about a month to get all the results back needed to identify the root cause of what needs to be addressed in order to determine a customized treatment plan specifically for you.

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THE SECOND VISIT GENERALLY TAKES ABOUT AN HOUR AND A HALF

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At your second visit (we call it your 'First Follow Up'), we will review the results of the lab tests, explain how these are contributing to your symptoms, as well as what types of treatments, medications, supplementation, and lifestyle interventions are needed to help maximize your unique treatment plan.  This is a big visit.  We go over results of tests you may never have had done before.  We also look at common labs through a lens of what's 'optimal' versus what's just 'in the normal range'.  Don't be overwhelmed by this visit.  It's a ton of information and it isn't meant to overwhelm you.  Our providers use that time to put together a comprehensive plan so we have an ultimate goal on our end as well.  It's easiest to do all of that at the same time, even if we don't implement everything at once (we typically don't).  There isn't a quiz at the end of that visit, but patients often find it useful to take notes.  We will outline everything in writing at the end, but there's something about writing it down yourself that helps to remember details later on.

Of course it depends on your individual plan, but labs are more often than not repeated 6 weeks after therapy is started and follow up scheduled for 8 weeks after to go over those results and make changes where needed.  Sometimes we need to dig deeper and look into other possible causes for symptoms if they're not identified on our first evaluation.  Many of our patients have extremely complicated histories, have seen multiple physicians in the past, and require further investigation.  It goes without saying - everyone's journey is different.