Integrative Women’s Health & Precision Medicine
Our new functional medicine consultations provide an even more comprehensive option for patients. This service addresses complex and chronic women’s health cases across multiple systems, involving hormonal balance of the adrenal axis, thyroid and sex hormones, gut health and mental wellbeing. We also assess mitochondrial health and immune function.
Functional medicine is a powerful and important tool working in synergy with conventional medicine to achieve the best outcomes and improve your quality of life.
What Is Functional Medicine?
The systems biology-based approach focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of illness. Evolving research in nutritional science, genomics and epigenetics is used to restore health and prevent disease occurring in the first place. The person is the focus rather than the disease process.
Functional medicine navigates the landscape of illness through physiological and biochemical pathways, and mechanisms at a cellular level. It recognises that all body systems are interconnected and influence each other. It is important to join the dots and view the whole person on a physical, psychological and spiritual level.
The gut is the central axis for health and immunity and many illnesses can be triggered by imbalances in the gut microbiome and intestinal lining. Digestive health is crucial to our overall health. By restoring gut health, many conditions can be moderated or reversed to regain vitality.
We assess the interactions between genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors that impact health and complex, chronic disease. Illness is often multifactorial: stress, adverse childhood events and trauma also greatly impact our neurobiology via the hypothalamic -pituitary axis and subsequent health outcomes.
Functional Medicine – An Effective Treatment
The functional medicine model evaluates your health with detailed history taking, establishing a timeline of your story with the presenting symptoms, contributory factors and your current state of health. This process can be very therapeutic in understanding the root causes and drivers of your symptoms and your own narrative.
This is then combined with cutting edge, detailed laboratory testing and functional testing to analyse the precise reasons for illness and imbalance. The information is then collated and used to create a personalised treatment plan of how to restore health.
This is the essence of integrative medicine, where multiple treatment modalities including conventional medicine, psychological therapies, lifestyle medicine and complementary medicine are blended.
Results from functional medicine treatment protocols demonstrate this approach is an excellent and holistic method of treating a wide range of health problems.
Functional Medicine is the medicine of WHY? We look to identify the root cause imbalances with each client and work together to shift and allow the body to heal, re-balance and thrive.
We utilise the four ‘P’s – preventative, precision, personalised and partnership. Put simply, you are treated as an individual. Your treatment plan is tailored to your specific needs and goals, and we work together to not only get you back to full health but act preventatively.
Functional Medicine recognises that our bodies are incredibly complex, and ill-health can be due to interrelated mix of genetic, biochemical and lifestyle factors. It offers in-depth testing to understand the underlying cause of ill health and then help develop a precise personalised treatment plan.
Areas of Focus:
- Personalised guidance regarding nutrition and use of appropriate supplements. Nutritional therapists and health coaches form part of the multidisciplinary team approach to support your journey.
- Sleep and active stress management, exercise and movement are all taken into consideration.
- Treatment plans often incorporate wisdom from ancient healing systems such as Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine, for example, the use of acupuncture, herbal remedies and adaptogens.
- Bioidentical hormones – we use a compounding pharmacy where bioidentical hormones and other medications are tailored to you.
- Reference to conventional medicine as needed and referral to appropriate specialists.
Conditions That Benefit From An Integrative And Functional Approach
- Hormonal health
- Gut/digestive health
- Mental & emotional wellbeing
- Immune function
- Chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia
- PMS
- PMDD
- Endometriosis
- PCOS
- Menstrual cycle irregularity/menorrhagia
- Period pain or dysmenorrhea
- Perimenopause
- Menopause
- Cyclical migraines
- Hyperthyroidism/Grave’s Disease
- Hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s Disease
- Adrenal/HPA axis dysfunction
- Constipation/diarrhoea
- Bloating
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome
- SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth)
- Gut dysbiosis
- Reflux/gastritis
- Anxiety/depression
- Mood swings
- Cognitive dysfunction/brain fog
- The impact of trauma, chronic stress and adverse childhood events on health
- Inflammatory bowel disease such as Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s disease support
- Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Graves’ disease
- Autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and SLE
- These conditions can cause a spectrum of widespread pain and extreme fatigue and can have multiple underlying root causes such as SIBO, leaky gut/dysbiosis, autoimmunity, cortisol dysregulation and mitochondrial dysfunction.
Simply enquire using the button below. We will follow this up with some questions and a consultation to both help you understand more about our approach and determine whether you are suitable for the process. Find out more about what to expect.
- Make an initial enquiry using our enquiry form. Dr Ghazala Aziz-Scott will then assess your suitability for the functional medicine consultation.
- If we are able to help you, we will send you an intake questionnaire, multiple symptoms questionnaire (MSQ), a consent form and a booking link to help you get started.
- Please make sure you can return the questionnaire at least 3 days prior to your appointment.
- Following the initial consultation, your written plan will be sent to you within 3 working days. Our admin team will assist with booking tests. Please note that functional testing can take up to 3 weeks to get results.
- A follow up appointment can be booked 4 to 6 weeks after testing.
- Functional medicine works best using the multidisciplinary team approach and you may be advised to also work in conjunction with a nutritional therapist that works in partnership with Dr Ghazala, for example if you need a gut restoration programme as part of your treatment.
Our functional medicine consultation is different to our standard consultations. We outline the differences below.
Standard consultation:
- 45 minutes
- For straight-forward hormonal issues such as perimenopause or menopause.
- For patients with no history of complex medical problems
- Involves standard testing such as hormone blood profile and DUTCH testing
- The main treatment is bioidentical hormone balancing
Functional medicine consultation:
- 75 minutes
- This is a deep-dive into your health
- For patients with multiple health issues involving hormones, mental health, gut health, or other chronic health conditions
- Patients required to fill in intake questionnaires and send in hospital letters or test results you already have so a comprehensive and detailed assessment of your health can be made
- Access to additional specialised functional medicine testing such as Metabolomix, comprehensive gut testing, and nutrigenomics
- The approach is usually multidisciplinary so your clinician will work with a nutritional therapist and practitioners of other modalities where necessary
We offer:
- DUTCH Plus testing
- DUTCH test with cycle mapping
- Comprehensive gut testing such as GI Effects
- SIBO testing
- Metabolomix, NutrEval and organic acid screen
- Genetic testing for SNPs/ Nutrigenomics
- Nutrient and Toxic elements profile
- Comprehensive thyroid screens
- Methylation panel
- And more!
How Do I Book A Functional Medicine Consultation?
Our functional medicine service require a specialist consultation. Before we can book you in, we need to find out if the service is appropriate for your health concerns. Please enquire about the service using the button below, providing as much information as possible to allow our doctor to assess your case. This is the treatment process.
