Our practice was recently featured on NewsChannel 5 Nashville for our efforts working in Telehealth and COVID-19 Efforts. We are thrilled to have this recognition! See the video from the interview below as well as the link to the full story on NewsChannel 5’s website.
Like so many on the frontlines of the pandemic, Jan Andrews can barely tell where her work life ends and her home life begins. Partially because she’s just so busy. “I realized I need to do something, I need to help in some way,” Andrews said.
But mostly, it’s because she brought her work home with her. Literally.
A front, small room in her house that was once a study, is now being used to study patient vitals and host well checkups. “Initially I thought, well telehealth during the pandemic, probably a good idea. There’s a big demand for it right now with everyone quarantined at home, so that’s where it started,” said Andrews.
While our current world may be a fast-paced one, that does not work well in a medical consultation.
It is not difficult to picture a clinic in which there is a drive to narrow the focus, arrive at a diagnostic name, and match it with a standardized treatment. And while that may seem to be a reasonable plan, it often fails to put the different pieces of a medical condition together.
Even more often, it fails to consider the different treatment options available. And it invariably lacks the essential value of an insightful and educational connection between provider and patient.
So in order to interrupt the course of an illness, the first necessity is a medical consultation that is an exception to the fast pace seen outside the office.
Feeling Seen, Heard, and Empowered
Quality time is precious.
An in-depth exchange of ideas about your health and your world has untold value.
When we sit down and carefully consider the many aspects of your body and life, there occurs a natural opening up of our minds.
This is how we take maximum advantage of this essential opportunity to bring together your experience of your life with my knowledge of the wide world of healing options.
Getting All the Essentials Covered
In our initial interview, the first priority will be for us to gather all the details of your current condition.
This includes how things first came about, how they changed over time, and where they are now. All the factors impacting your symptoms are important.
Rather than focusing only on diagnostic labels, it will be more beneficial, and thus more important, to examine the elements that created the issues at hand. The objective is always to dismantle the structure of illness by undoing each of its contributing pieces.
Opening Up the Field of Your Options
Equally as valuable as dissecting the state of disease is bringing to light all the angles from which it can be addressed. In my experience, there is always a wide variety of paths we can take toward wellness.
Stress comes in many forms. Toxicity comes in many forms. Bodily dysfunction comes in many forms.
Unlike the mainstream standard of naming the picture of symptoms and suppressing it with a drug, we will discover how the normal, healthy function has been compromised and use the effective strategies to bring it back into order.
Treating Ourselves with Respect
Everything we do – allowing ample time for our discussion, considering all aspects of your history, taking a mind-body-nature approach, having you understand what is happening in your different states of health or illness, and looking at all possible options for making the changes you seek – is about respecting who you are as an individual and where you are in your life.
As a truly caring, highly experienced staff, we are here to provide the very best for you.
Functional Medicine is a systems biology–based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or differential diagnosis may be one of many contributing to an individual’s illness.
As the graphic illustrates, a diagnosis can be the result of more than one cause. For example, depression can be caused by many different factors, including inflammation. Likewise, a cause such as inflammation may lead to a number of different diagnoses, including depression. The precise manifestation of each cause depends on the individual’s genes, environment, and lifestyle, and only treatments that address the right cause will have lasting benefit beyond symptom suppression.
The Seven Basic Principles of Functional Medicine
Science-based medicine that connects the emerging research base to clinical practice.
Biochemical individually based on genetic and environmental uniqueness.
Patient-centered care rather than disease-focused treatment.
Dynamic balance of internal and external factors that affect total functioning.
Web-like interconnections among the body’s physiological processes also affect every aspect of functionality.
Health as a positive vitality, not merely the absence of disease.
Promotion of organ reserve as a means to enhance the health span.
