I'm looking for a doctor who does a holistic approach and at the same time, also has a conventional medical training. Are you a board-certified doctor?

Yes, I am a board-certified OB-GYN who did a conventional residency training in a busy hospital. At the same time, I am also board-certified in Nutritional Medicine, Health Optimization Medicine, and Antiaging medicine. These 3 holistic specialties encompass nutrition, gut health, stress management, exercise, sleep, environmental toxins, bioidentical hormones, and peptides (GLP-1 like tirzepatide for weight loss) to name a few. These 3 holistic specialties fill in the gaps and perfectly complement conventional medical care.

How long will a consultation with you run for?

I will need at least 1 hour to go thoroughly over your lifestyle, life story (from childhood), your family history, and of course any current medical concerns.

What is different from your weight loss program from other doctors and nutritionists?

Since I am both a certified conventional medicine doctor and holistic, health optimization specialist, I approach weight loss with these wide range of skills. Depending on my assessment of your weight concern, I will test for various causes of weight gain (or failure to gain weight) like family history (suggesting genetic causes), high stress levels, poor sleep quality, exposure to environmental toxins, hormonal imbalances, quality of social relationships, and of course level of physical activity, and what you eat, the schedule of your meals and how you prepare your food. After such a thorough assessment (both interview and ideally after doing metabolomics tests), I can now recommend a personalized weight management program for you. Depending on your goals and what you can realistically do, this program can start with basic targeted supplementation and basic lifestyle support, all the way to the more comprehensive programs which may include GLP 1 injectables.

What are bioidentical hormones and why can they be good for some people?

Bioidentical hormones have a structure that is exactly the same as the structure of the hormones naturally made by the body. Non-bioidentical hormones are synthetically modified like ethinylestradiol found in pills. Non-bioidentical hormones can also come from other species like conjugated estrogens from pregnant mares. Hormones naturally bind to certain cell receptors in our cells. Non bioidentical hormones may result in excessive, unstable, incomplete binding resulting in undesirable effects in some individuals. Bioidentical hormones bind with stability and ease with our cell receptors. Bioidentical hormones are also easily degraded and removed by the liver, should there be excess levels.

How can metabolomics tests make your wellness programs better than those of nutritionists and other lifestyle specialists?

Metabolomics tests are like taking a selfie of your actual cell metabolism. Metabolomics tests tell me exactly which vitamin, mineral, amino acid, fat you are deficient in or in excess of. Too little of a nutrient is just as bad as too much as this can upset your metabolic balance. Other specialists usually base their wellness and nutrition programs on your weight, BMI, age, activity, gender, conventional medical tests, and medical conditions. These criteria, however, cannot tell accurately how your metabolic pathways inside your cells are functioning. Calories in is not necessarily calories out. Exercise intensity does not always correlate with results. One needs to know exactly how your cells are working via metabolomics tests in order to have a better designed food, movement, stress, and sleep program for a single person.

What's the advantage of metabolomics tests over genetic tests for wellness?

Metabolomics tests show me what is ACTUALLY happening inside your cells. Genetic tests only show what MAY happen. You cannot change your genes. But you can change the way your genes behave via good (or bad) lifestyle. Metabolomics tests can guide me in making recommendations only for you for food, exercise, stress management, sleep, toxin exposure avoidance, and much more.

What makes your anti-aging services different from those in derma clinics and spas?

Those in derma clinics mostly view aging based on the external appearance of a person's skin (like wrinkles and sagging) or hairloss. These for me are just signs of poor or declining health as what can happen from natural aging as early in our 30s, to those who are actually diagnosed with a condition like prediabetes, diabetes, hypertension of autoimmune diseases. My anti-aging approach is to actually test for deeper reasons of aging like nutritional and hormonal imbalances that usually result from a less-than-ideal lifestyle. My anti-aging programs certainly do not promise quick temporary fixes such as fillers, botox and lasers, but rather I work on long term correction of these external signs of aging. For example a patient in her 60s was very worried about her hairloss. She was given a biotin supplement (turns out when I tested her, her blood biotin level was normal making biotin supplements useless).

What sets you apart from other wellness specialists like lifestyle medicine and functional medicine?

Health is not simply the absence of disease. My specialty, Health Optimization Medicine, finds the ROOT CAUSES OF HEALTH that you may not have, whereas Lifestyle and Functional Medicine are focused on disease detection and correction (much like regular medical specialists). I use metabolomics tests to detect your metabolic problems that make your cells malfunction and unhealthy. These metabolic problems cannot be detected by standard conventional tests. Every person has a different set of cellular metabolic problems from another so metabolomics tests guide me in making ultra-personalized wellness programs only for you. Lifestyle Medicine does not use these tests and therefore may miss cellular problems. Functional Medicine largely uses questionnaires and food as medicine, and only uses metabolomics tests in a limited scope and therefore may also miss cellular problems. There is no guessing and one-size-fits-all wellness programs in my practice.