____________________________________________

HORMONES 

At Optimal You our approach starts with a comprehensive review of your history and laboratory values. 

When developing your treatment plan, we first view everything through the lens of optimization instead of normalization. This is a concept your primary care provider and OB/GYN will likely not understand. 

What does optimization versus normalization mean? It means the difference between feeling good and continuing to feel bad. It means we treat you, as a unique individual, and not some number on a piece of paper.

If you’ve ever visited your primary care provider or OB/GYN with concerns that your “mid-life body” wasn’t cooperating with you, and they told you there’s nothing wrong… and maybe even offered you an antidepressant, then you fell vicitim to normalization. To them, because everything appeared normal on your lab work, then there was no further investigation or work to be done.

Fact is, a person’s hormones begin to decline by 1-2% per year around age 30-35 years. If you do the math, by the time you’re 50 years old, you could have a very significant decline in hormone function. This is a recipe for feeling bad, having no energy, and becoming depressed. 

At Optimal You we make certain that your hormones are optimized, giving you the best chance for feeling better, having more energy, losing weight, avoiding antidepressants, protecting bone density, preventing fractures, preventing cardiac disease, preventing all-cause mortality, and preventing Alzheimer’s.

____________________________________________

THYROID 

Management low thyroid is one of the lost arts of medicine. In general, thyroid disorders are misunderstood and grossly mismanaged. These days, it seems that even specialists are confused. 

People come to Optimal You specifically for our tremendous reputation and very successful track record for helping them with this crippling disorder. Optimization of thyroid hormones are the cornerstone for managing low thyroid, which means you feel better faster. 

The challenge arises from lack of knowledge about which laboratory tests to order as well as lack of knowledge for interpreting those laboratory results. In fact, many well-intentioned medical providers only order one of eight thyroid markers and base their decision to treat on this one lab value alone. Nothing could be more wrong than to only have one-eigth of the picture. 

At Optimal You, we understand the critical importance of treating the whole patient and not a number on a piece of paper. Sure, we assess your laboratory results, but we assess all eight of markers. We simply don’t allow laboratory values to completely sway our decision to treat. We rely on symptoms gathered from assessment of the client’s history and view these data as equally important to laboratory results. The fact is, medical research backs us up on this, and patients get amazing results.

____________________________________________

AUTOIMMUNE

Occurence of autoimmune disorders have risen sharply in the last ten years. The medical communty really doesn’t know why, yet it continues to administer dangerous biologics which completely wipe out the immune system. 

At Optimal You, our goal is not to interfere with your treating autoimmune provider. Our goal is to help support their efforts with proper nutrition and supplementation, so your immune system functions at a more healthy and normal level, and you begin to heal naturally.  

We recognize that autoimmune disorders are highly complex and require time to bring about noticeable changes. However, those who remain faithful to treatment options, will see improvement. 

We also do not actively seek-out clients with autoimmune conditions. They either come to us with a known autoimmune disorder, or we identify an autoimmune disorder during our assessment, evaluation, or treatment.

____________________________________________

DEPRESSION 

Having practiced psychiatry for over 20 years, founder, Dr. Brian Brown, has come to respect functional and integrative medicine approaches for the treatment of depression. He actually views them as the essential foundations to depression management. 

We live in the “age of the brain” where a plethora of antidepressants and other medications are available in the armament of psychiatric medical practitioners; however, statistics show us that suicide is on the rise. In fact, there has been nearly a 60% increase of suicide in the over-forty crowd in the past 15 years.

If medications are the answer, they why the spike in suicide. Research tells us that age-related changes in the body contribute to depression and, when these deficits are properly addressed, then mood improves.

At Optimal You, many people are able to avoid going on antidepressants while others are able to come off of antidepressants. This treatment approach is a game-changing new lease on life for many who struggle with age-related depression. 

____________________________________________

ON WEIGHT LOSS 

For people over forty, a general rule of thumb is that our bodies do not respond the same way they did when we were in our twenties. For many, it’s only a matter of hormone optimization and thyroid optimization. For others, it requires a bit more work.  

At Optimal You, we do not believe in nor use amphetamine (“speed”) drugs. It is well known that reducing a person’s appetite and subsequent dietary intake of protein forces the body to catabolize (“canabolize”) it’s own muscle. Your metabolism is fully dependent on health lean muscle mass.  

This loss of muscle mass while on amphetamine drugs destroys a person’s metabolism and is the reason why people gain their weight back, and sometimes more, when they come off of these addictive drugs. 

We believe that using amphetamines is tantamount to medical malpractice… yet, for some reason (hint: money), big pharma is allowed to perpetuate this problem.  

Typically, weight does not increase by 50 pounds overnight, so we can’t expect it to come off overnight. 

At Optimal You, we believe that there is no quick-fix. It takes hard work. Dr. Brown knows this best as he has survived a battle with obesity having once been 390 pounds. Now, he leads people on the wellness journey of lifestyle and mindset change in order to get the weight off and keep it off.

____________________________________________

ON PCOS (POLYCYSTIC OVARY SYNDROME) 

PCOS, in the United States, is said to occur at rates of 5% of the female population of child-bearing age. This just increased from 2% to 5% occurrence. Now, don’t get this confused with “diagnosed cases.” Occurrence just means that this much of the female population has PCOS at any one point in time. Sadly, the number of diagnosed cases is around half the amount of occurrence rates.  

Here’s an interesting fact. When you look outside of the United States, the occurrence rates of PCOS are between 25% and 40%. These rates are this high in nearly every country in the world, third world and non-third world countries alike. Then, why are the numbers in the United States so low? Great question. 

The numbers are low because diagnostic guidelines are very poorly defined in the U.S. This leads to medical providers not being taught the correct way to diagnose it, treat it, or manage it. In the other countries that have higher numbers, they have superior diagnostic criteria and treatment protocols when compared to the U.S. 

Other countries also aggressively manage PCOS because they understand that women with PCOS are at higher risk for diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, infertility, and breast cancer. Other countries realize that diagnosing, treating, and managing PCOS raises the health and wellness of the female population. 

At Optimal You, we understand how to diagnose and manage PCOS so women feel better and reduce their risk of diabetes, breast cancer, and heart disease. We screen every woman automatically for this condition as well as the most common co-occuring autoimmune conditions that accompany PCOS. We manage numerous women with this disorder, and they tell us that they feel better than they’ve felt in years.