“If I wanted to be the master of common disease, I needed a practice that paid me to think as deeply as I could, about no one else but my patient.”
How Did PureHealth Functional Family Medicine Start?
01
I looked at health from a different perspective.
Shortly into my practice, I decided that Family Medicine, to me, isn’t being a jack-of-all-trades. It is being the master of common disease. My medical school colleagues called me a “science geek” as I wanted to discuss high blood pressure in the same depth as a cardiologist. In practice, I found that I spend more and more time doing things that have nothing to do with biochemistry and anatomy. These are things employers, insurers, governments, and hospitals want but don’t improve how my patients feel.
Those players demanded more and more of my time and attention. I noticed my patients were having more trouble trusting the healthcare system than me. At the same time, the prices for everything increased.
02
And then I got sick.
I had dutifully read New England Journal of Medicine and I trusted my basic science training. Now that I was the patient, the answers I got from the healthcare system weren’t logical or scientific.
My hips “wore out from playing sports”. Even though professional athletes used their hips more, they were fine.
My doctors told me that everything was due to my “age”. However, I had hormone levels of an 80-year-old at age 48. Tests showed my glands weren’t damaged, but no one wanted to find out why they weren’t working.
The guidelines the insurers and governments told me to follow assumed that I couldn’t be cured. However, no one knew how I got sick.
03
I started studying functional medicine from doctors who researched how people got sick in the first place.
I found their arguments more intricate, scientific, and logical. They explained more of what I had observed during my career. The treatments they proposed made me feel better. Those treatments took time to explain, weren’t often covered by insurance, and were frequently expensive.
The only catch – both traditional and functional doctors profited from the products and services they advised me about.
To be the master of common disease, I needed a practice that paid me to think as deeply as I could, about no one else but my patient. I want to sell advice. Advice that is logically-derived from basic biochemistry and anatomy. My advice is uncoerced by anyone but my patient. My practice uses technology, not worships it. I offer technology proven to increase my patient’s satisfaction, not limited to an insurer’s or government’s satisfaction.
I designed PureHealth so I could be an unconflicted servant. A “rent-a-geek,” paid to think as deeply as scientifically possible. My service is only about my patients’ desires for their health and finances, and not my own or my family’s.
Care Philosophy and Mission Statement
My definition of “good healthcare” is only important when you say it is. As the “hired help,” my job is to make sure that your condition is deeply analyzed and completely communicated in words you don’t need to be a geek to understand. When you’ve decided what “good healthcare” is, my job becomes bringing that definition into reality. Because I listen carefully to your story, detail your symptoms, and thoroughly examine you, new technology and its expense becomes less helpful. When I know of a technology that is helpful, I tell you. You choose what makes sense to you, not someone else.
Don’t let your health stress you out!
The Fundamentals of PureHealth
The first fundamental of sincere advice is Direct Primary Care. Paying your doctor directly makes it so I can focus only on you and your values. I’m not interested on opinions of an insurer, hospital, government or employer. Plus, you can rent that advice in any amount you think you’ll need, getting discounts the more you buy. The second fundamental of sincere advice is my written guarantee that I will profit only from my advice. Not from anything I give you advice about: medicine, supplement, lab, imaging or referral. When you buy a product through me, you get it at my discount (usually at ½ to 1/10th the cost of purchasing through insurance or buying on your own). If you aren’t comfortable that my advice and service are the best you can get for your money, then you ought to be able to take your money somewhere else.
What is Functional Medicine?
Traditional medicine teaches doctors to alleviate symptoms. It doesn’t matter if the underlying process that caused the symptoms goes unchecked or gets worse. The problem is the underlying process will cause something else to go wrong, eventually. Many holistic, alternative, or functional medicine doctors treat disease using only products and ideas that aren’t patentable (owned by one person or corporation). However, nature doesn’t always provide a way to solve some of those underlying processes. Some patented products are useful, and some work better than natural products. I make my decisions based not on philosophy, but biochemistry, anatomy and physiology. Functional medicine teaches doctors to find the biochemical difference between when you’re healthy and when you’re sick. If you’re sick, we use all tools available to return you to your healthy state. In Functional Medicine, cure is the goal, not disease maintenance. I’ll provide whatever depth of care you want, but I want to offer that Functional depth of care.