Our Approach to BALANCED Treatment
Mood disorders affect the whole person, from their thoughts and emotions to their family life and physical health. Today, full recovery is possible, and there are many effective treatments to choose from including medications and hormone replacement, counseling and psychotherapy, products and supplements as well as dietary and lifestyle approaches.
Not all treatments are right for everyone, and not all aspects of mood disorders are negative. These conditions also bring strengths which are important to identify so they don’t get lost in the treatment. Our goal is to help patients find the right balance between the benefits of full treatment and the risks of overtreatment.
Careful Assessment
There are many kinds of mood and anxiety disorders, and accurate diagnosis is essential to finding the right treatment. For example, some depressions can actually get worse with antidepressants. An accurate diagnosis can also help you find the right therapy. Some psychotherapies work best if your depression started recently, while others work better if your depression has been long-standing.
We use research-based diagnostic tests to make sure we are on the right path. Many medical conditions contribute to mood disorders including thyroid, autoimmune and endocrine disorders, vitamin and nutritional deficiencies, inflammatory disorders and blood sugar imbalance. We take a whole person approach, looking for the root cause of a patient’s symptoms.
Prevention and Wellness
At Balance our goal is to optimize a patient’s health. We disagree with the popular approach in medicine, where we wait until a patient is suffering with significant symptoms and labs and other objective measures are way out of the normal range. We don’t wait until a patient has a full-blown disease, we listen to the body to address issues and prevent illness. Symptoms are your bodies way of letting you know that something is wrong, and it should be paid attention to. Our bodies have developed very complex and sophisticated systems to alert us when something isn’t right. We suggest that patients listen to their bodies and we will listen to you.
Subtle changes in lab work are significant, lab reference ranges can be misleading. Being on the high or low end of the “normal” range can signal dysfunction and certain “normal” lab values in conjunction with each other may signal a problem. At Balance, we will investigate, look at labs in relation to each other and the patient’s symptoms, find patterns and help to identify problems before they proceed to disease.
Shared Decision Making
At each visit, you will play a key role in choosing the treatment that best fits your goals. When making recommendations, we consider both the short and long-term effects of treatment.
Family Involvement
Mood and anxiety disorders impact the whole family, and healing from these effects is an important part of treatment. Sometimes patient’s family members will notice improvement or worsening in their symptoms before the patient does. Patients differ in how they would like their family involved. We respect people’s need for privacy and will discuss with you what level of family involvement is best for your own situation.
Functional Approach
Many issues that patients are experiencing today are a result of the mismatch between our environment and lifestyle and how our bodies have evolved to survive and reproduce. Our Paleolithic ancestors survived because they had genes that enabled them to survive in harsh conditions.
Most of our patients come to us looking for answers. They’ve been feeling unwell for some time and are looking for the right provider to sit down, listen and work with them to get their body functioning correctly. They know something is wrong, they feel different, but a diagnosis or acceptable treatment has eluded them. Traditional medicine is failing patients because it has broken a patient up into different systems with a specialist treating their “system” without adequately considering the person as a whole.
We try to address the root cause of a patient’s illness- rather than simply treating symptoms. We want to understand the underlying mechanisms. Emerging medicine is providing evidence that a common underlying dysfunction can cause discrete symptoms in many systems in the body. For example, inflammation has been linked to dementia, cancer, heart disease and obesity, as well as autoimmune, allergic and psychiatric disorders.
As medicine evolves, we’re realizing that the body isn’t actually what we thought it was. It’s a dynamic complex and adaptive ecosystem that responds to inputs from the environment. We work to address this dynamic, complex system in a patient’s body.
Patient Education
How can you help us help you?
We strive to provide the highest level of care without creating a financial burden. We know that financial stressors will only make our job of helping you feel better more difficult. We do our best to keep our fees reasonable, while accepting health insurance. You can help us continue to do this by:
- Attending scheduled appointments or providing adequate notice to cancel.
- Asking for refills at your appointment or requesting them through the pharmacy to cut down on office calls.
- Paying your balance at your appointment so that we don’t need to mail statements and pay for postage.
- Buying your supplements from us! We will price match and you can also use your health care savings card to purchase. We will never push products on you. Please ask for them; we want to sell them to you if you are interested.
- Referring your family and friends-there is no better compliment to us.
- If you have a great experience, tell us! It is motivating and keeps us going.
- If you don’t have a great experience, please don’t leave without telling your provider, Allyson, Jennifer or Julie. We make mistakes, but we can’t fix them if we don’t know.
- Is there a product or service you think we should incorporate into our practice? We’d love to hear about it!
A healthy mind, mood and body takes collaboration and team work from the provider and patient for the best outcome. Thank you for your cooperation and choosing to join me on this path of wellness.
Disclaimer
The information contained on the Balance Women’s Health, Inc. website is not intended as a substitute for professional medical care. Medical information provided on this website is for general information and educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Any questions concerning personal health care should be directed to licensed physicians or other appropriate health care professionals. Neither Balance Women’s Health, its affiliates, nor any other party involved in the preparation or publication of the words presented is responsible for any errors or omissions in information from the use of such information.