What is Functional Medicine?
How Does Functional Medicine Work?
Functional Medicine is a personalized, holistic approach to healthcare that focuses on identifying and treating the root cause of disease rather than only focusing on symptom management. We focus on treating the whole person with the goal of restoring FUNCTION, VITALITY, and QUALITY OF LIFE.
Health is not a static state. It is an ongoing balancing act between our body’s internal physiology and our external environmental factors (nutrition, toxin burden, stress, sleep, community, movement, and other factors).
In Functional Medicine, medical knowledge and expertise is combined with lifestyle medicine, nutrition, stress management, and movement strategies to promote long-term health and achieve lasting wellness. Rather than viewing each body system as a separate entity, this approach views your body as a network of systems, tracing systems through interconnected pathways to find the drivers of disease.
This is truly patient-centered care.
FAQs
What services do you offer?
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Our clinic sees patients via telehealth consults. This means we will see you during your visit through a secure, HIPAA-compliant online video platform. Shepherd Vitality serves multiple patient populations via telehealth functional medicine consults. In addition to the specific areas of care listed below, we also see patients for general wellness and functional medicine needs. Please contact us using the form on our Home page to share how we can guide you back to vitality.
Men’s Fertility Optimization: Planning to conceive? We will work with you to make a personalized plan that optimizes your chances for a healthy pregnancy, also enhancing the likelihood of your child’s future long-term health factors.
Women’s Postpartum Recovery Optimization: Postpartum is a crucial, beautiful, and vulnerable window for every woman. We believe women deserve high-quality support and helpful, healing interventions during this stage of life. We see patients who have experienced the joy of bringing their child home, in addition to patients walking through a loss.
Mental Wellness Support: Tired of being handed yet another antidepressant prescription? Working to get off your stimulant but still need to function through your day? Receive expert guidance in navigating diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, and ADHD through personalized telemedicine consultations.
General Health Support: Not feeling your best? Struggling with fatigue, brain fog, nervous system overwhelm or other general symptoms you’d like to address naturally? We’re here to help you with the root cause through natural solutions.
How do I get started?
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Getting started is simple. Reach out through our contact form on the Home page, or feel free to call or send an email to schedule a Discovery Call. After ensuring we are the right fit for your needs, we will book your consultation, and you will receive your Patient Intake forms and a Video Call Invite link via email.
Initial consults are usually between 45 and 90 minutes. Follow-up appointments are anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on the reason for your visit.
What makes This Clinic different?
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Our healthcare provider, Nina AGNP-C, believes there is a better way to do patient care. Having previously been a dismissed, chronically ill patient in the medical system herself, she understands the deep frustration that can result from our current healthcare model. Determined to do better for her patients, she completed functional medicine training through the American Academy of Functional Health (AAFH) and launched Shepherd Vitality, with YOU in mind.
Being a telehealth-only, cash-pay practice ensures the highest degree of patient access to a functional medicine provider. This model bypasses insurance-model barriers to care and saves you time on your commute. Short on time? No problem! With our practice’s structure, you have the freedom to complete a telehealth visit on your lunch break at work. No more missing work time to schedule your appointments.
A note to our postpartum patients: Having experienced the stillborn loss of her son Shepherd in 2024, Nina shares a unique perspective with the women who never had the opportunity to bring their baby home. This has given her a high degree of empathy for women walking this difficult path and has inspired her to seek further tools to best support postpartum women physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
How can I contact You?
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New patients can complete the brief, fillable form on the Home page to be reviewed by our team within 1 business day.
You can also reach us anytime via phone call or email. If we were not able to answer your call, we aim to respond quickly—usually within 1 business day.