Services Offered:
Medication
We work together on fine-tuning psychiatric medication regimens. I can offer pharmacogenetic testing to further personalize medication choices through Genomind which is most helpful for individuals who are looking to continue medications but have had adverse effects or ineffectiveness with multiple medication trials. This includes medication that helps with the symptomatic relief for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, and psychotic disorders, as well as alcohol addiction and OCD. Medications can also be helpful for symptomatic relief as we are treating underlying causes of your mental health symptoms.
Psychotherapy
Listening to your story and helping you navigate through life's challenges in a trusted relationship, helping you build resilience, insight, and new skills that will help you change unhelpful thought patterns while learning safety within your own body.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)
An often effective and solution focused somatic/emobdied treatment for PTSD, trauma, anxiety, depression). ART can be combined with ketamine assisted therapy and is especially helpful for anxiety, phobias, and/or PTSD. Four to six sessions within 8 weeks are recommended. More about ART here.
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)
Ketamine when combined with therapy serves as a potent catalyst for meaningful change in quality of life. Ketamine is a psychedelic legally available in clinical settings. It has similar effectiveness to ECT and lithium for treatment resistant depression in trials, with a much more favorable side effect profile. More about KAP here.
Lab Assessment
Assessing for underlying nutritional deficiencies or medical causes of your symptoms with basic labs.
Depending on your symptoms, we may recommend more in-depth lab testing for mental health symptoms, gastrointestinal symptoms, cognitive symptoms, fatigue, or insomnia such as:
Genova NutraEval
Genova Organic Acid Test
Salivary cortisol testing
Urine mycotoxin
3x4 genetics
Genomind pharmacogenetics
Stool testing
iGenex labs
Basic blood draw labs are typically covered by insurance. Specality labs, such as those listed above are not covered by insurance.
Supplements/botanicals
Thoughtful and evidence-based knowledge and optimization of supplement and herbal options for mental health symptoms. You will have access to high quality supplements at 35% off the MSRP as a patient. We are often able to help decrease doses of psychiatric medications with the use of supplements or improve symptoms when augmenting medications with supplements.
Nutritional Psychiatry
Optimizing brain health through high yield nutritional and gut-brain focused approaches. We teach you approachable ways to increase brain nutrient dense foods for mood, energy, anxiety, focus, and thinking. We are able to assist and help navigate with elimination diets if recommended as well as ketogenic diets.
Medication De-Prescribing
Individualized de-prescribing of psychiatric medications - when possible - that involves dietary changes, targeted supplementation, and addressing underlying contributing factors.
Chronic Lyme, Bartonella, and Babesia Treatment
Tickborne diseases such as lyme diseases, Borrelia, and Bartonella are becoming more common in the upper Midwest. These complicated and misunderstood conditions frequently present as fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, and a surprisingly wide variety mental health and neurological symptoms. Many psychiatrists are not aware of this connection. We take a detailed clinical history, order labs as indicated, and provide integrative treatment for tickborne diseases to not only improve mental health symptoms but also other symptoms. Frequently as part of treatment, diet changes and immune system support approaches are recommended, as well as treating co-occurring mold toxicity and mast cell activation, if indicated.
Metabolic Psychiatry
There is growing researching showing a connection between metabolic health and mental health. With a metabolic psychiatry approach, we target inflammation and improving mitochondrial function through diet changes and targeted supplementation. We can help with blood sugar stabilization with the use of continuous glucose monitors.
Gut Health
Mental health symptoms can be related to gut dysfunction - in a bidirectional way. We address underlying gut issues such as dysbiosis (imbalances in the microbiome), SIBO, low stomach acid (hypochlorhydria), and IBS while also helping reduce your mental health symptoms that could be contributing to your gut issues. Assessing for pathogens, dysbiosis, food sensitivities, inflammation are typically part of the workup. By focusing on improving the permeability of the intestinal tract, balancing the microbiome, and utilizing targeted supplements/medications, individuals often have an improvement in their mental health and overall immune system function.
Mold and Environmental Health
Mold plays both beneficial and harmful roles in our environment. Molds found in our daily environments—especially in foods and buildings—can pose serious health risks.
The principal mechanism by which molds adversely affect both animals and humans is through the release of mycotoxins, which are very small organic toxins. They are directly toxic to the nervous system and are linked to neuropsychiatric disorders and abnormalities in neurological testing. Numerous articles have shown that mycotoxins impair the immune response and trigger inflammatory reactions in both humans and animals.
In a review of the literature, individuals exposed to mold report an extensive range of symptoms including malaise, fatigue, and cognitive impairment. In one study, patients who had been exposed to mold were impaired on a variety of cognitive measures, including verbal learning, visuospatial learning and memory, psychomotor speed, and emotional functioning. Those with a confirmed mold exposure history reported moderate to severe levels of cognitive, physical, and emotional symptoms (particularly depression). Neuropsychological testing also indicated impairments similar to those seen in mild traumatic brain injury.
The immune disruption can lead to longer, more severe bacterial and fungal infections. In addition to causing the immune system to be underactive (or deficient), mycotoxins have also been shown to cause elevations of antinuclear antibodies (Gray et al., 2016). This suggests that mycotoxins trigger autoimmunity as well. At our clinic, we assess for and treat underlying mold toxicities that can be causing mental health symptoms or affecting your treatment response to tickborne infections.