How we help you to achieve your health goals
Our programs are all about reversing and slowing the aging process, preventing disease and treating chronically ill patients. We utilize a three-pronged approach: Firstly, we equip patients with the knowledge that is required to take charge of their health and achieve optimal well-being. Secondly, we focus on disease prevention by providing a thorough evaluation using comprehensive diagnostics and the information provided on the patient’s health history form. And finally, we work with patients to implement a rejuvenation program that consists of various science-based treatments that reduce cellular degeneration, promote tissue regeneration and healing as well as slowing down the aging process.
We do NOT replace the role of the family physician, instead we work with primary care physicians, internists and other medical professionals to provide the optimum in integrated care. We consider each and every individual as physiologically unique, and we do not subscribe to a “one size fits all” approach. Our programs focus on a customized approach that will address risk factors that, if avoided or modified, could have beneficial effects for reducing the incidence of and premature mortality from the leading chronic conditions. Our vision is to provide the latest in scientifically-validated therapies for reversing the aging process, preventing chronic disease and optimizing health. Following are the nine key elements of our diagnostic and treatment programs that help patients reverse and slow the symptoms of aging.
if you are coming to us for the Bredesen Protocol/ReCODE, then you will get your own personalized “Cognoscopy”. The cognoscopy will answer all of the following questions:
- Where do you stand today with respect to cognitive decline and chronic health issues?
- What factors/markers/lifestyle factors that are risk factors for cognitive decline and chronic health issues are not optimal?
- Which is your risk profile for each of Bredesen’s six types of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)?
- What can you do to change this risk profile?
The Cognoscopy will answer all of these questions and more as it includes cognitive function testing that is age-normalized, a very thorough review of more than 50 lab-based markers for chronic disease and onset of AD, a risk assessment for each of the six types of AD, diagnosis of each area that is not optimal, recommendations for additional testing and a clinical plan to get you on the path to optimizing health and reversing mild cognitive decline if you have it. Click here to read more about our implementation of the Bredesen Protocol through our Brain Health Optimization Program.
PATIENT RESPONSE
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each of these key anti-aging elements.
Comprehensive Initial Assessment
The comprehensive initial assessment begins with the patient’s completion of a detailed health history form. Next, the physician will develop a customized laboratory requisition that the patient will take to their nearest Quest or Labcorp to have their blood drawn and the lab tests performed. When complete, the results will be electronically transmitted to our office. Once we have the results, the patient comes into the office for a 1-1/2 hour initial consultation that includes a thorough review of their past medical history, family history, lifestyle choices, nutritional intake, present symptoms and health goals. Body composition testing is also performed during this visit to establish a baseline and to further assess the patient’s metabolic health.
During this initial appointment, the physician will discuss the preliminary diagnoses and treatment plan options. Depending on each patient’s health goals and other constraints, our treatment plans may incorporate bioidentical hormone therapy (BHRT), growth hormone replacement, specialized medications, nutritional supplementation and eating plans as well as exercise and lifestyle changes. All of these components are designed to help to optimize the patient’s health, vitality, well-being and longevity. Depending upon the age and medical condition of each patient, referrals are provided for tests such as ECG & exercise tolerance tests, prostate, testicular and pelvic ultrasound tests, colonoscopies, mammograms, bone density testing, and others tests to ensure the safety and suitability for treatment recommendations.
The traditional medical practice typically focuses on diagnosing disease and prescribing a pharmaceutical intervention for the disease. Our Anti-Aging Medical Assessment is designed to focus on the patient’s individual risk factors, the root of the disease process and the implementation of science-based programs that are focused
Specialized Testing
We utilize advanced laboratory testing to identify markers for chronic disease, food sensitivities, heavy metal toxcicity and nutritional deficiencies. Through the research of Dr. Lawson, the tests that we recommend form the basis of of our wellness programs and help patients identify early warning signs of chronic diseases and confirm clinical diagnoses based on health history and symptoms. Our advanced biomarker testing program uses the latest scientific advances to help patients assess how “fast” they are aging in the critical areas of cognitive function, heart disease risk and telomore length. Armed with the results of these assessments, the physicians at Proactive Wellness deliver highly personalized medical recommendations that help patients achieve optimal health.
Click Here to Learn more our New Advanced Biomarker Assessment
Our laboratory-based tests and our use of optimal ranges to assess these results also play a critical role in helping patients identify and reverse early signs of aging.
Detoxification Programs
Toxins are present everywhere in our environment. The bottom line is that if you’re breathing, eating, drinking or bathing, you are being exposed to toxins. There is no way to live in this world and avoid them. Not only do we have to concern ourselves about the chemicals in our environment, we must also understand the impact of heavy metal exposure and its impact upon our health.
So, how can you determine if the environment has challenged your health?
Are you tired, cannot lose weight, have chronically low body temperature, moody, suffer from ADD or have memory problems, have unstable blood sugar and overwhelming carbohydrate cravings, developed rashes or skin problems, have high cholesterol or yeast overgrowth?
If you have answered yes to any of these symptoms, there is a distinct possibility that the toxic environment may be a contributor to your health issues. While it is true that the body has a “built in” detoxification system, it was not designed to deal with heavy toxic burden of today’s environment. Click here to learn more about toxcity and our detoxification programs
Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy
It is broadly accepted by the medical and scientific communities that a number of hormones decline with aging, and that these declines can result in many of the symptoms and manifestations of aging. For women, menopause is the result of the precipitous decline in estrogen and progesterone production. For men, andropause is the result principally of a decline in testosterone levels. The other hormones that decline and are well-documented include growth hormone and the adrenal hormone DHEA. The decline in these hormones starts much earlier and is more gradual. Our bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is designed to counter these declines with therapeutic level of hormone replacement. Click Here to Read More About our Hormone Replacement Programs
A Functional Medicine Approach
We utilize a functional approach because we recognize the interconnection between the systems of the body. Functional medicine is personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes, instead of symptoms for serious chronic disease. It is a science-based field of health care that is grounded in the following principles:
- Biochemical individuality describes the importance of individual variations in metabolic function that derive from genetic and environmental differences among individuals. Our approach is ground in the concept of helping patients achieve optimal health “one at a time”. All programs are tailored to each individual’s specific symptoms, results, health goals and other constraints.
- Patient-centered medicine emphasizes “patient care” rather than “disease care,” following Sir William Osler’s admonition that “It is more important to know what patient has the disease than to know what disease the patient has.”
- A healthy respect for the dynamic balance of internal and external factors.
- Understanding of the web-like interconnections of physiological factors – an abundance of research now supports the view that the human body functions as an orchestrated network of interconnected systems, rather than individual systems functioning autonomously and without effect on each other. For example, we now know that immunological dysfunctions can promote cardiovascular disease, that dietary imbalances can cause hormonal disturbances, and that environmental exposures can precipitate neurologic syndromes such as Parkinson’s disease.
- Health as a positive vitality – not merely the absence of disease.
In implementing the principles of functional medicine, we employ a strategy that looks at each patient’s unique needs and seeks to find the root cause of symptoms that have manifested. This is in stark contrast to “traditional” medicine that typically focuses on just treating symptoms. When a person complains of pain, discomfort or recurring health complaints, it is the body’s unique way of communicating and getting a persons attention. Rather than prescribing pain medication, functional medicine seeks to identify the root cause of the prolem. For example, consider headaches or backaches. Tylenol or aspirin may temporarily resolve the symptoms but the real questions is why are we experiencing the pain? Another example is depression where certainly an anti-depressant may help; however, it may be that the person has a neurotransmitter (brain chemical) imbalance, food sensitivities or toxic chemicals that have accumulated. By paying close attention to small problems, often times larger health problems can be prevented. The goal of functional medicine is to focus on prevention and to improve overall health throughout life and especially during the “golden years”. To read more about functional medicine, click here to read the authoritative website on functional medicine
Nutritional Supplements And Medical Foods
Since it is now well established that we cannot get all of the nutrients that our cells need from healthy eating alone, all patients require nutritional supplementation to optimize their health. To learn more about our approach to nutritional supplementation, Click here. Proactive Wellness Centers offers several product lines that work together as part of our prescribed treatment programs to enhance and optimize each of our patient’s overall wellness. We recommend multiple product lines, each targeted at specific areas of needs that our patients have. Dr. Lawson feels comfortable recommending these products as she is both an avid consumer of many of the products and an avid researcher of the products for safety and efficacy. Learn more about Nutritional Supplements
Eating Plans
Many of the foods that are available in restaurants and grocery stores are highly processed and contain significant amounts of sugars, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals that are foreign to the human body. While we do not believe in “diets” we do believe that a cornerstone to any plan to optimize health has to include eating “whole”, healthy foods in the proper amounts and appropriately balanced. Accordingly, all of our Health Assurance Plans include Eating Plans that we provide to patients to help them improve their eating habits permanently.
Further, many patients have food sensitivities. Through food sensitivity testing, we can identify the “safe” foods and the foods that a person is sensitive to or intolerant to. Our Eating Plans help patients to eliminate the foods that they are sensitive or intolerant to. We have seen many patients who didn’t initially respond to treatment, but once their food sensitivities were identified and eliminated, they responded robustly to the treatment plan. We have seen chronic symptoms disappear, significant weigh loss occuring and other improvements in overall health when we eliminate foods that an individual is sensitive to.
High Touch Delivery Through Annual Programs
Because every person is biochemically unique, people respond at different rates to our treatment programs. And most times, treatment plans require course adjustments at periodic intervals, typically after re-testing. Our practice operates nearly exclusively on the concept of annual programs because we know that wellness is a process that requires continuous honing and adjustment. As humans, we are continuously changing, and we change more quickly as we age. This process requires adjustments in the amount of hormone medications and other components of our treatment plans. Ethically, we are required to aggressively monitor patients that are on certain medications and we take this responsibility very seriously. The most cost effective way we have found to create the type of high-touch, doctor-patient relationships that we desire is through our annual programs.
Pricing
The physician fee for the initial consultation is $475.00. Patients have two choices for follow-up visits. Individual visits are $275 per visit. However, for patients that are on BHRT or otherwise require continuing monitoring, we require one of our annual Health Assured Programs. The Health Assured Programs include quarterly/semi-annual office visits, email and phone consultations as needed, treatment plan adjustment and monitoring for the first year and range from $1,075 to $3,675 depending on the number of hormones being monitored and the complexity of the patient’s treatment program. The lowest programs are hormones only and the highest program incorporate complexities such as CIRS/Mold and other environmentally-based illnesses. In addition, it is recommended that all patients commit to a nutritional supplementation program. Note that the prices provided above do not include the cost of lab tests and the actual hormone preparations. These costs vary significantly depending on insurance coverage, the number of hormones needed and other factors.
We accept credit cards and GE Care Credit for payments. GE Care Credit allows payments to be extended for up to 48 months at a low 13.9% fixed APR for program costs of $1,000 or more. The availability of this program is subject to credit approval from GE Card Services. Payment information is required at the time of making your appointment. We do not accept insurance although we will provide you with a properly coded receipt for our services and you may be able to get a partial reimbursement from your insurance carrier. If you have any questions about our fees or payment methods, you may contact our Business Administrator, Andre Etherly, at andre@proactivwellnesscenters.com or by phone at (703) 822-5003 Ext 4.
Chronic Disease Treatment
Our Chronic Disease Treatment generally follows our SSRP protocol as defined and described below.
- Stop the progression of the disease and strengthen the immune system
- Stabilize the patient to include balancing hormones and restoration of energy
- Reverse cellular, mitochondrial and other damage done by the disease processes as evidenced by various lab markers and/or symptomatic expression
- Prevent further development of the disease processes
Our SSRP protocol provides patients with a leading-edge program based heavily on the emerging body of evidence in the chronic disease space that is well supported by peer reviewed medical journals, clinical studies from observational studies all the way to double-blind placebo controlled studies. We focus on safety and efficacy when selecting treatments. Treatment protocols depending on the disease are comprised of IV Vitamin Therapy, high-quality and targeted nutritional supplementation, botanicals, traditional medications where indicated and compassionate care by our team of doctors. As an integrative practice, we use conventional medications when indicated especially in cases of underlying co-infections and other areas where conventional medication offers the best course of treatment. Read below to learn more about the 4 pillars of our SSRP approach.
STOP progression of the disease
Our first goal is to stop the progression of the disease. Here, we use binders both medication-based as well as targeted nutritional supplement and botanicals as well. Many patients begin IV Vitamin Therapy immediately after commencing with a program. Many patients report significant improvement after just one IV treatment. We will also introduce conventional medications at this point when indicated.
STABILIZE the patient
Stabilizing the patient is the process of assessing the response to the early interventions, adding the appropriate oral nutritional supplementation to augment the IV Therapy and providing bioidentical hormone replacement to balance the hormones and improving detoxification pathways to aid in healing and repair. In addition, we add other conventional medications as needed based on the results of our comprehensive lab panel to treat any identified infectious components. By the time we have introduced these components, patients typically experience significant improvement in sleep, meaningful reduction of chronic pain, reduced fatigue and increased energy.
REVERSE cellular, mitochondrial and other damage done by the chronic disease processes
Not all damage can be reversed, but our treatment protocol has a high probability of reversing cellular and mitochondrial damage, enhancing mitochondrial function, and addressing and treating other etiologies such as neurotoxins, mast cell activation disorder, hyper-sensitivities and other debilitating effects.
PREVENT further development of the disease processes
Our program relies on therapeutic dosages of key nutritional supplements such as D-Ribose, CO-Q10, Fish Oil, L-Carnitine as and detoxification support as part of the program to prevent further development and escalation of the disease. Some patients may also require continuous periodic IV Therapy treatments and use of some conventional medications to maintain the benefits of the treatment. We periodically get updated lab results to verify that the patient is maintaining the benefits of the treatment, and we use these to determine if additional interventions are needed.
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