Functional Nutrition Approach to Chronic Illness
For Over 25 Years
Are you struggling with digestive issues, chronic fatigue or just feeling unwell? You may have seen multiple doctors and specialists only to be told that all of your tests were normal and that everything is fine.
For over 25 years, I have been using a holistic/functional approach to help people heal from chronic health issues. Functional Nutrition is a holistic and science-based approach rooted in Functional Medicine which aims to identify and teat the root cause of chronic disease rather than just silencing the symptoms.
Uncovering the Root Causes of Chronic Illness
Root causes of disease (known in functional medicine as triggers) often work together, in combination with genetic factors and life experiences to create a “perfect storm” for the development of chronic symptoms or ill health. Triggers can be a highly stressful event, a medication, an infection (bacterial or viral), a food protein such as gluten from wheat, a nutritional deficiency, poor diet or an environmental toxin.
Uncovering the root cause of chronic disease is like detective work. You can think of me as a “health detective”. We look at various factors including your history, symptoms, your diet and your laboratory tests. We ask questions to determine what is unique about you, and what might have precipitated the health problems that you are experiencing. Might there be genetic factors? Diet or lifestyle factors? Food sensitivities or nutrition deficiencies? Toxic exposures, pathogenic infections or emotional stressors? We then try to connect the dots to figure out what is causing your health problems.
Tools Utilized to Help you Heal from Chronic illness:
-Dietary Medicine: Therapeutic and healing diets
-Nutritional Medicine: Pharmaceutical grade nutritional supplements
-Botanical Medicine: Botanicals with exceptional quality, purity and effectiveness
-Lifestyle Medicine: Health-supportive lifestyle changes
–Detoxification: To help facilitate the body’s natural healing abilities
Conditions and Symptoms That I Can Help With:
- Digestive disorders
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
- Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO)
- Dysbiosis or microbial imbalance (overgrowth of “bad” bacteria and not enough “good” bacteria)
- Intestinal yeast overgrowth
- Acid reflux
- Gastritis
- Leaky gut
- Chronic intestinal gas, belching, bloating, diarrhea, constipation and/or abdominal pain
- Inflammatory Bowel (IBD)
- Fatty liver
- Food-Related Issues
- Food Sensitivities
- Celiac disease and Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity
- Food Intolerance (fructose, lactose and other FODMAPs, disaccharides, histamine)
- Unexplained fatigue, brain fog or just feeling “unwell”
- Cancer and Cancer Prevention
- Chronic Pain
- Fibromyalgia or Muscle Pain
- Arthritis/Joint Pain
- Headaches
- Migraines
- Skin Conditions
- Eczema
- Psoriasis
- Acne
- Dermatitis
- Thyroid Conditions:
- Hashimoto’s
- Grave’s Disease
- Hypothyroid
- Autoimmune Conditions:
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Multiple sclerosis (MS)
- Lupus
- Hashimoto’s
- And others
- Frequent colds and infections
- Others:
- Chronic Unexplained Symptoms (with more complex chronic illnesses, Susan might recommend that you also work in conjunction with an integrative or functional physician).
- Nutrient Deficiencies
- Toxicity-related: Often due to a combination of impaired detoxification (which may be genetic), combined with exposure to environmental toxins. Can manifest as symptoms of fatigue, muscle aches, joint aches, fluid retention, skin symptoms and autoimmune disease among others
- Diabetes/prediabetes/insulin resistance
- Hypoglycemia
- Kidney Stones
- High Cholesterol
- Hypertension
- Overweight (adults)
- Please note that Susan Carroll does not have expertise in the areas of eating disorders or sports nutrition and does not work with individuals who need help working in these areas.
For complex cases, Susan might recommend that you work with an integrative or functional medicine physician in addition to working with her.
