A functional nutrition dietitian is a registered dietitian whose core philosophy revolves around a root cause approach that is highly individualized to each client in order to reach optimal health and healing.

Functional nutrition seeks to understand the root causes of system imbalances that influence one’s biology, genetics, nutritional status, and well-being. A comprehensive holistic nutrition assessment helps the practitioner design a personalized treatment plan, tailored to the patients unique needs and lifestyle to support the highest expression of health and healing. Each person is unique and this is recognized in a personalized clinical assessment, nutrition diagnosis, and intervention plan that engages and empowers the patient in this process to restore optimal function, manage symptoms and promote overall health and well-being. 

A functional nutrition approach to healing chronic health conditions focuses on identifying and addressing the root causes of symptoms through diet and lifestyle changes. This whole body, root cause approach is individualized based on a comprehensive functional nutrition assessment, individual symptoms, health history, and labs aiming to restore balance to the body.

Functional nutrition addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms.

It is patient-centered care that involves comprehensive lifestyle interventions: nutrition, physical activity, stress management, sleep, social support, and environmental exposures.

Our core philosophy revolves around the concept of biochemical individuality which means each of us has a different nutrition blueprint to achieve optimal wellness. The concept that we have our own, unique genetic expression.

Each individual has a unique physiological and biochemical composition, based upon the interactions of his or her individual genetic make-up with lifestyle and environment — i.e., the continuous exposure to inputs (diet, experiences, nutrients, beliefs, activity, toxins, medications etc) that influence our genes. The unique makeup of each individual requires personalized levels of nutrition and a lifestyle adapted to that individuals needs in order to achieve optimal health. The consequences of not meeting the specific needs of the individual are expressed, over time, as degenerative disease.

Personalized nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses study linked here. (nutritional biochemistry)

Functional nutrition may involve the use of functional lab testing in order to reach the root cause of certain conditions such as gut health issues, hormone imbalances, or any nutrient (vitamin/mineral) deficiencies.

Functional lab testing helps in uncovering the root causes of health issues rather than just addressing symptoms by method of saliva, stool, or urine samples.

• GI-MAP Stool Testing for Gut Health
• DUTCH testing for Hormone Health
• OAT Testing

It involves the use of targeted and tailored supplementation that is highly personalized to each client.

Supplements are personalized to the client based on data obtained from a comprehensive functional nutrition assessment. Dietary supplements can be effective for restoring balance and speeding up results in many conditions and most common supplements have a good safety profile. Food based recommendations are still the most important part of the therapeutic intervention using a food-as-medicine approach to health and healing.

What can you expect during the initial consultation using a functional nutrition approach?

We dig deep into your health history looking at dietary habits, current nutrition intake, medications, dietary supplements, physical activity levels, stress management, quality of sleep, and any environmental exposures. We use a hands on personalized nutrition assessment which involves a comprehensive initial patient questionnaire, symptom questionnaire, web based tools, apps, sensors, wearables data, and if needed condition specific questionnaires for IBS, IBD, GERD, SIBO, or SIFO.

We do all of this while also taking into consideration your health and wellness goals in order to create a personalized functional nutrition care plan for you that includes personalized lifestyle recommendations, individualized guidance around nutrition, and targeted practitioner grade supplement recommendations which will allow and support healing over time.