Evanston's #1 Functional Medicine Specialist, Dr. Barbie Allegretti Answers All Of Your Questions in Part 2!
How does functional medicine complement what Cornerstone Health is already doing?
– So the care here at Cornerstone is comprehensive and in the mission to support and eradicate people experiencing chronic pain, functional medicine is the perfect complement to that so it’s just a matter of looking at the other side of the picture. In the office, you’re supporting the movement and improvement of the physical health and the complement of what I’m doing in supporting that and supporting the pain is looking at the internal environment.
Dr. Fergus aims to get people to 80, 90 percent of their function and you can think of functional medicine as that extra ten, 20 percent that’s gonna help you get to the point that you want to be and more than just living pain-free but really having vitality and quality of life in your day to day and living optimally.
What does the functional medicine healing process look like?
All right, so what is the process with functional medicine? So you might be experiencing insomnia, hormone issues, digestive issues, and pain that isn’t improving to the degree that you want or need it to.
All of those things would be good reasons to set up an appointment to meet with me. So the first step would be to set up a complimentary consultation and in that consultation, it’s just a time for us to get to know each other, I get an idea of what you’re looking for, kind of what you’ve been through before you commit to initiating care and treatment. So it’s about 15 minutes and we do that either in the office or over video conference so you can do it in the comfort of your home or on your phone and it’s just a discussion so we’re not getting into any diagnosis or treatment, it’s more discussion of what you’re looking for, can I help you, and is this the direction that you want to go.
How do I know if I would be a good candidate?
So I talked about the things that you might be experiencing that would warrant you coming to see me or making an appointment, you know, that doesn’t include if you have something immediate, you know, so if you have a broken arm goes to the emergency room.
If you are, you know, fainting, if there’s something life-threatening that you need immediate attention for or that needs to be addressed immediately then that would be, you would want to go see, go to the emergency room or go to an immediate care or your primary. So what we’re addressing with functional medicine is, that a lot of times people experience improvements in the short term but it does take time.
What’s a realistic time frame for me to start getting better?
So people often ask me what to expect as far as the time frame of their improvements, whether they’re not sleeping or they’re, have chronic headaches or migraines and usually within the first two to three months we will see great improvements as long as you’re on board with all my recommendations and we’ve found a manageable and reasonable way to implement them into your life. Some people need more help and time than others and that’s okay usually people start to feel better within a couple of weeks, that, and you know, the great improvement of their symptoms generally happens within two to three months.
How can I get more information on functional medicine?
So I’m very excited to be able to partner with Dr. Ben and Cornerstone clinics in incorporating functional medicine and holistic medicine and we are offering 15-minute complimentary consultations so you can schedule with the front desk, you can call in and we’ll be able to set that up, we’ll meet in person, either in the office or we’ll meet via video conference as well and during that time I’ll answer any questions that you have if you need to learn a little bit more about functional medicine and see if it’s for you and also just to get to know each other a little bit and see if we’re a good fit for each other moving forward.
