Absolutely not. In fact, the two are complementary and the more personalized treatment you engage in, the more likely that your regular practitioner will not find much “disease” to treat. If you are seeing your practitioner for treatment of things such as diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol issues, heart disease, or other chronic inflammatory diseases, then functional care with personalized attention will aid your practitioner’s ability to gain a good result as your body becomes more capable of healing.

I would hope that you do. I think any practitioner dealing with you should be aware of all the facets of your health. Now that being said, it is quite likely that your primary care practitioner may not be familiar with natural therapies, as they are not taught in conventional medical or nursing school. Functional medicine is a specific fellowship program that practitioners pursue after medical school or nurse practitioner program. I am more than happy to speak with your provider to facilitate a cooperative understanding of how we can all work together to improve your health.

Simply ask your provider to explain “why” he/she is making this recommendation. They may have a very good reason for his/her concern. 

Then again, it may just be that they are unfamiliar with this therapy and unsure how to handle your questions. If you feel that this is the issue then simply have your practitioner contact my office and I would be perfectly happy to discuss your case and treatment with them. This is ideally how medical treatment works best when two good minds collaborate to benefit the patient.

Wellness.Balance.You. currently does not accept any form of health care insurance. 

It is recommended that you call your insurance carrier to find out if your plan covers an “out of network” provider. I do not bill your insurance directly but can give you a receipt for services at your request, which you may try to submit for reimbursement. However, most times, you may be able to use your insurance for blood work, certain advanced labs, and any prescription medications. You may also use pre-tax dollars from a Health Savings Account (HSA) or a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) to pay for your consultations, lab fees, and prescriptions/supplements as your insurer allows. I cannot guarantee what your insurance plan will cover, but will try my best to accommodate your needs.

To the point, I do not take insurance because I do not want insurance telling me what I can and cannot do for my patients. Insurance companies pay for disease and prescriptions (and they don’t even do that well). There is not reimbursement for reversal of disease and optimization of health. A respected functional medicine physician in Colorado has these few paragraphs on her website that go into more detail on why clinics like mine do not bill insurance:

“When clinics bill insurance companies directly, the providers are required to become participating providers. The provider must sign a contract that allows the insurance company to determine which services they will and will not provide, and how much they can charge for those services. In general, insurance companies are not focused on any preventative or wellness services. They are heavily invested in the conventional model of health care that too often relies on drugs and surgery. I am committed to the functional medicine model that addresses the underlying causes of your symptoms with specific nutritional and lifestyle recommendations.”

I am not accepting primary care patients so that I can focus on supplementing primary care with my integrative and functional specialties.  All patients should have a PCP to cover for acute needs, routine care, and screening (such as mammograms, Pap smear, and colonoscopy). Every patient I see will need to have seen their PCP within the past year and had their basic labs done. In some cases, it may also be requested that they return to their PCP and have additional labs/testing done before moving forward with any functional testing. This will be case by case and under my discretion.

Yes, we order food allergy testing whenever necessary or requested, especially for Hashimoto + Graves patients. Our food allergy testing is done through a third-party lab, Genova, and they test your sensitivity to over 75 foods. We have test kits in our office, or one can be shipped to your address. After you get your blood drawn and return the test kit to the lab, we receive the results anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks.

Wellness.Balance.You. is a specialty clinic that does not take shortcuts or treat patients like a number in a system. Cherise is committed to doing whatever it takes to get your life back and has invested countless hours and dollars in continuing education and advanced protocols.  This includes becoming a Fellow in Anti-aging and Metabolic Medicine.  She is  confident this investment in yourself will pay you and your loved ones premium  dividends in energy, productivity, resilience, and quality of life.

We accept FSA and HSA cards as forms of payment.

Cherise FNP-BC works closely with you for the first six months or so of treatment to hone in and optimize your hormonal (adrenals, sex hormones & thyroid) health and nutritional well-being. Each patient’s appointment schedule is unique to them. Her goal is to get you to a state of hormone optimization as quickly as she can. After this occurs, appointments are needed on a less frequent basis. Ultimately the goal is to get you to a point where she see you only 2 to 4 times yearly.