Healing with a Different Approach

I am a Physician Associate that practiced conventional Primary Care medicine for more than 20 years.  I navigated the health care system which is built by organizing people into illnesses, codes, treatment protocols associated with the disease code and billing cycles. ​ There is a culture to avoid asking the questions that would lead to the bigger conversation about all of the factors that are impacting a persons health, particularly with regards to mental and emotional health.  Our system of care which is based on asking questions regarding signs & symptoms that the patient has an awareness of usually because they present some specific barrier for them (arm pain therefore their inability to play pickleball) and then we drive the conversation to uncover other less obvious/barrier prone signs and symptoms that we then coalesce into symptom complex that we characterize as an illness that we associate with a diagnosis and a code that further drives an associated predetermined, clinically validated treatment protocols that I then prescribe medications for and or order additional testing to further validate the treatment course.

This is the culture of western medicine and the system that most medical providers must work within to perform patient care.  A few years ago, I began to understand physiology and pathophysiology differently- particularly when patients had refractory conditions or illness progression or when they routinely made quality of life tradeoffs between treating the diagnosis I had given them and side effects/adverse effects of the treatment.  I saw this most commonly with mental health dysfunction- where our treatments that we routinely prescribe have been shown to be little more effective than placebo.  As such, I found myself often preferring to refer persons affected by mental health challenges to psychiatry and psychotherapy believing that they would benefit from a higher level of specializations and options than I could provide in Primary Care.  

During and following the Pandemic in 2020, there has been a marked increase in mental health concerns and I experienced the increasing frustration with available treatment options and working within a system that is guided and funded by a diagnosis.

Diagnosis- what's in a name?

I have witnessed people move through the journey of what it means to be given a diagnosis.  For some, at least initially, it can be validating- to have a name and perhaps a reason for the discord that they have felt and with that the hope of a treatment to get better.  Given our treatments and system of care, given how we have routinely separated the health of the mind and the health of the body as though they exist separately and are not intimately linked.

I have seen many people who perhaps had an initial improvement but found that it wasnt a durable treatment or resolution and move through the path of more and different drugs at varying doses and compromises of side effects.  

I have seen people begin to identify with their dis-ease/diagnosis as a means of seeking understanding and acceptance and validation for the dysfunction that they feel but isn't always visible from the outside.

Many healthcare providers turn away from the culture that they were "raised in" of Western Conventional medical care when they themselves or a loved one begins to suffer and they are unable to provide ease given the basis of their training and or the system of which they work within.

The catalyst for me directing my medical education differently to try and makes sense of ​

I spent years believing that, as a trained medical provider, somehow that I knew better than the body, or even participating in what seems to be a vilification of the body- an orientation that somehow along the line, your body has betrayed you.  Whether it be your genetics and no fault of your own, or through behaviors that you brought upon yourself.  

Instead now I revere the body's innate intelligence. I no longer seek to override what it has been doing to survive to the best of its ability even if it created seemingly noxious symptoms in the process.  I no longer feel compelled to override what it has been doing to accommodate for its conditions and instead seek to understand and support it in ways that it hasn't been supported and therefore had to make due with what it could do instead of fault it for what it wasn't doing.  I no longer view the body as separate systems, each requiring its own discipline and area of study like they aren't all connected and part of the same being.  To do that is to not see the forest through the trees and dismiss the immense grandeur that it is to see a forest when you focus solely on the tree in front of you and accept that's where the beauty ends.

What to know when you meet me:

I try very hard these days not to fall into giving diagnoses and labels and instead listen to what you have awareness of, what is creating barriers to what you enjoy most about your health and life.  I assemble working sign/symptom clusters in an effort to better understand commonalities and associations but not to determine a prescriptive protocol.  

I have chosen to limit my prescription writing to a handful of medications and for limited duration in an effort to foster innate healing instead of override the body's intelligence, capacity and adaptation given circumstances that we cannot fully appreciate and therefore value at this point in medical science.

Medical science routinely takes things out of context of the body and isolates them calling them pathophysiologic because we don't fully understand the true origin or impact in vivo of the body in its entirety.  It may seem counterintuitive to us why the body would accommodate in ways that seems derogatory to its own physiology and so we dismiss it, override it believing that "we" know better and can "fix" what the body is doing wrong and crating dis-ease.

It is a complete shift in my perspective to assuming the body is good and doing its best with what it has faced instead of the body is betraying you and needs to be overridden for your own good by modern medicine. But a refreshing one.

As such, there are a few prescription medications that I leverage with the intent to provide short term support while it regains its footing to best support optimal health.  The medications that I specialize in for these reasons are: Procaine, Naltrexone, Ketamine and the GLP-1 class of medications.  

If we are partnering in your mental and physical health journey, I am no longer prescribing NEW conventional, chronic psychiatric prescriptions for day to day treatment of mental health concerns.  If it is YOUR preference to continue these medications, long or short term, however, I will be supportive in continuing them for as long as your are comfortable with doing so.  If you are interested in transitioning off of current psychiatric medications onto more durable, sustainable, natural treatments, I am happy to partner with you on what options could be available as well.

Generally, I am open and accepting of many approaches to healing and will encourage alternatives in most forms to conventional medicinal treatments and often my counsel will support your exploration of these with an informed discussion on any potential risks or considerations to be aware of some potential paths of discussion may be around traditional/ancient therapies such as Psilocybin, Cannabis, Ayahuasca, energetic/frequency.  Ultimately, my intent is for your to have a safe place to have informed discussions, to feel seen, heard and valued and hopefully understood.

Thank you for exploring your options and reading to this point.  Thank you for not choosing to settle for what mainstream medicine and conventional systems are offering you.  Thank you for considering coloring outside of traditional lines and considering alternative paths to supporting your body healing and respecting the incredibly complex, integrated and beautiful vessel we get to explore this existence with.

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