For the last six months I’ve been taking a course on how to help people like you resolve their underlying health issues. The course was very intense with many tests, two live practicals, two clinical reviews, a very challenging written exam (I spent about 40 hours completing it), and the final verbal exam, which I passed today!
What is FDN?
It stands for Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. We use a five-pillar approach to helping you heal yourself. They are Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress Reduction, Supplementation. We refer to this as D.R.E.S.S. Education is a big part of this program; part of my work with you is to teach you the WHY behind it all.
What do I do as an FDN-P (Practitioner)?
I will work with you to dig deep into your health complaints via consultation, intake forms, and lab work. These all help me formulate a plan of action designed to help you heal yourself.
We don’t treat or chase symptoms; that’s what the medical industry does. You have migraines, here are some drugs. They work for a while, but you still get the migraines. You are treating the symptoms, but what is really causing the problem, and what other hidden issues do you have?
The intake forms and lab work help ferret out that information. They are quite detailed and ask about current and past symptoms, among other things.
The labs provide me with insight into your cortisol levels, gut function, sleep, hormones, food sensitivities, and pathogens. Without the labs, it’s just guessing.
These labs are not the same as what you would have run by most doctors, especially the cortisol and hormone labs. Cortisol cycles throughout the day, it should be highest in the morning shortly after you wake and steadily decrease throughout the day with the lowest in the evening. If the evening level is high, you aren’t going to get to sleep or won’t sleep well. If you find yourself sleepy all the time around 2 – 4 pm, your cortisol levels are probably low at that time of day. There are many variations, and they all give me clues as to the root cause of any health issues you might have.
When you see a doctor, even an endocrinologist, or some Functional Medicine doctors/practitioners, they typically only order a blood draw with one sample vs. the four saliva samples the labs I use examine. Saliva samples are a better indicator of levels than blood samples. A single blood draw at a random time tells us nothing except what the cortisol level was at that instant and nothing else. Just the stress from having blood drawn can cause a stress response, which elevates cortisol and skews the results.
Once I have the lab results, I take all the information and correlate it to your symptoms and come up with a plan of action to help you heal yourself, which includes all aspects of the D.R.E.S.S protocol I mentioned earlier. We meet again, and I go over everything with you. Support via phone, email, Skype, etc., goes on for anywhere from 90 to 120 days, depending on the plan you chose. Some labs will need to be done again to make sure you are healing, and so we can make adjustments to the plan, if necessary. We tweak things as necessary based on how you respond to the protocols I develop for you.
Why I became an FDN-P?
I decided to become certified as an FDN Practitioner because, over the years, I have seen how exercise alone, too much intense exercise, and extreme diets have failed you. All that works short-term, sometimes, for some people, but almost everyone regains the weight, or they never really feel good. It’s all been short term fixes. We need to go beyond the quick fix to something that heals you without drugs.
The FDN course has given me new insights on how to better help you not just lose weight but to become truly healthy, and that is what is really important.
FDN-P vs. other Functional Medicine practitioners
So how does what I will be doing as an FDN-P differ from what other functional medicine professionals do? I don’t treat symptoms; I treat the whole body. I look for the underlying causes of your health complaints using non-medical methods to help you. It’s about teaching you to heal yourself. There may be circumstances where I suggest you might want to see a doctor, but, many times, I have options available. It’s up to you to decide how to heal yourself. If we find something serious, I will tell you to contact your primary care physician. But, in most instances, you can self-treat without seeing a doc.
A lot of Functional Medicine practitioners approach things in a similar manner to FDN but still rely on prescription meds. They never seek out the root cause of your health complaints. They continue to follow the standard medical model of chasing symptoms; they are just running more in-depth labs than other doctors. They rely heavily on drugs to treat symptoms, and many don’t dig down to find the root cause(s) of your symptoms. Some may use herbs and supplements, but they may not design a protocol that gives a structured plan of attack in helping you optimize your health.
My protocol for your health covers diet, rest, exercise, sleep and supplement recommendations. You must follow the complete protocol if you want to improve your health. If you don’t you might see improvements, but you’ll never be 100%
Remember, I don’t chase symptoms; it’s pointless. I try to find healing opportunities so you can heal yourself naturally.
Who can benefit from the FDN Approach?
If you have allergies, thyroid problems, low energy, or don’t sleep well. If are always getting a cold and can’t get rid of it. If you seem to always be sick or catch the latest bug. If you suffer from any auto-immune issues like Rheumatoid Arthritis, rashes, leaky gut, “adrenal fatigue, joint aches and pains, muscle aches and pains beyond the norm if you workout. Do you have a hard time remembering things, do you suffer from “brain fog”, ADD/ADHD, and other troubles with thinking?
Hormones off? Our labs show levels for the primary sex hormones and we can use supplements to get them optimized using supplements, but the real question is why are they not optimal in the first place? There are many reasons including stress and poor diet. While you can treat the symptoms of low testosterone or high estrogen with prescriptions, I want to get your body to regulate your hormones without any help, or as little as possible. We use hormones drops and precursor supplements to get your body to regulate itself. We also use stress reduction, diet, sleep, and appropriate exercise to heal the body instead of living the rest of your life taking injections or pills
Short of a severe medical condition, like cancer, or a broken bone, the FDN approach can help you to heal yourself.
We can also help your kids too. If they have trouble concentrating, have behavioral issues (ADD/ADHD), sleep troubles, allergies, get sick frequently, etc., the FDN principles still apply.
If you are ready to start the process of healing your self and returning to optimal health, contact me and set up a call.