So another question I've gotten during calls is, I'm not too sure I want to commit to a year-long program.
Why is your program a year-long? How else can I work with you? Very good question. So let me start by explaining why our programs are traditionally a year-long.
First and foremost, you're not coming to a conventional practice model where you get that 15-minute double-booked appointment. You're expected to follow up in three months and things not necessarily have moved.
That's conventional medicine. Here we're taking a deep dive. And I'm sure you'd understand that before you came to us with whatever the issue is, you just don't feel quite well.
You may have been diagnosed with a condition, diabetes, hypertension, autoimmune disease. Before you got to the diagnosis that you were assigned in a conventional medical model, things have been going on underneath the surface for quite some time. So think about it like an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is just the tip. There's a lot of stuff, a lot of mass underneath the water. That is what the functional medicine model is designed to do.
To go beneath, address the root causes in order to potentially reverse whatever it is you're dealing with, i.e. a diagnosis of hypertension, diabetes, whatever it is.
This change does not occur in a 15-minute double-booked appointment every three months. This occurs with a collaborative relationship.
This takes time to reverse, I would say, a minimum of a year, sometimes longer, where I'm providing you with tools so that you can optimize your health and have those tools for a lifetime to be able to move forward. I don't need patients holding onto me for years and years. So my vision is that after we have potentially addressed the root causes, reverse whatever it is that may have been the root cause, whether it's toxins, gut health, improved your mitochondrial health, your energy, whatever it is that we find in our initial assessment
and moving on during the course of the year. My vision is that after your year with me, you just come in for touch-ups, because now you understand that, hey, I have, for instance, thyroiditis or autoimmune thyroiditis and so I need to stay gluten-free.
And so I understand this lifestyle. I have the nutritional supplementation that helps me, or I have diabetes and I understand that maybe I need to go more organic because of exposure to toxins. They have depleted my mitochondrial health. If you understand all that and understand the things that brought you there in the first place, you will understand the things that you need to do to potentially keep yourself in a stable state, which just needs to come in for occasional touch-ups, check-ins, maybe once every six months or once every year. So that's the vision of the program and that's why the program is a year long because I'm providing you with tools that I hope will last for a lifetime. So I hope that helps us why it is a year long program. It is not a quick fix. There's nothing when it comes to chronic disease or health optimization that is a quick fix.
