The Sheehan Natural Health Difference
What makes us different?
Our unique combination of assessments!
Thank you for joining us for an introduction to our practice! So what assessments do we do and how do we figure out what is going on so that we can help you? Everything that we do is geared towards getting to the root cause of the problem. So how exactly do we do that?
Assessment #1: Foundational Nutrition
The first assessment that we use at your first visit is called Foundation Nutrition. Foundational Nutrition involves simple tests. They are so simple they are often overlooked and within minutes of your first appointment, we can determine a lot of really interesting things. We gather vital information on your overall state of health, your healing capacity, your mineral balance, your hormonal balance, and your cardiovascular health. So that is the Foundational Nutrition.
Assessment #2: Nutrition Response Testing
As our second step, we do an assessment called Nutrition Response Testing. This is the technique that we use to guide our visit-to-visit care as well as the initial assessment. It is a biofeedback technique. It uses a muscle response to locate areas of stress in your body. Now, is it going to show you everything? No, but it IS going to show you where the body is stressed and the big blockages to healing. For example, if your body is really lacking energy in a certain area, it’s going to show up and if you address it what do you think is going to happen? If you give your body a lot of energy in an area where it’s depleted you are really going to jump-start the healing process and you are going to feel better. This muscle test is so important and it is also so accurate that we use it to guide your ongoing nutritional care. There are some videos on this technique on our website. It is not a conventional technique by any stretch, so we do ask all of our new patients to watch these videos before they get started. By the way, these videos are hosted by Dr. Sheehan and in them, he has an amazingly long beard! However, keep in mind his beard is a lot shorter today if you come into the office.
Why Do We Use Multiple Assessments?
The reason why we use multiple assessments (we explain this to patients at their Report of Findings visit) is that if you were buying a house, you would want pictures of the outside, you would want pictures of the inside, and you would want a thorough inspection of the house. So that is what we do when we look at the body – we do the Foundational Nutrition, Nutrition Response Testing, and then we do a comprehensive blood analysis. These are the “pictures” and inspections of your body like when you are assessing to purchase a house.
Why Do We Use Nutrition Response Testing?
What is cool about Nutrition Response Testing is that certain things do not show up well on blood tests, urine tests, or even in patient history. However, these things do show up very well with Nutrition Response Testing. These things are specifically immune system stress and digestive stress. Nutrition Response Testing is incredible for these things and often it shows what the big problem is for that patient. That is the reason why we include this technique in our assessment and continued care.
Another reason we include this technique is that we can get constant feedback. If you do a blood and urine analysis, you can’t necessarily run these very often as it becomes cost-prohibitive. However, with Nutrition Response Testing, Laura will test supplements for Dr. Sheehan if he is not feeling well and she can check him again in 20 minutes to see how he is progressing. With this biofeedback, we can check this repeatedly and besides the office visit, it costs nothing. So, this is a very good way to keep costs down. That is why we love using Nutrition Response Testing in our practice.
Assessment #3: Comprehensive Blood & Urine Analysis
We would not be without the Nutrition Response Testing however we would also not be without the comprehensive blood and urine analysis. In fact, we would not do Nutrition Response Testing without a blood and urine analysis in our practice currently. So, at the end of your first visit, you do leave with a script for that blood analysis and these tests will show us how you are doing nutritionally in 13 key areas of the body. That is different from looking at your blood from a medical perspective, which is diagnostic. The medical doctor is looking for a diagnosis while we are not. If it looks like you may need a diagnosis then we will refer you to a specialist because we are not medical doctors, but we are nutritionists.
We are trained to look at your blood work; we comb through it finely and it gives us really important clues to where the nutritional imbalances may be in your body that are contributing to you feeling bad. A lot of times, you may not have anything “abnormal” on your blood work from a medical perspective, but there are clues that will show why you are feeling the way that you are feeling. So, that is what we do. We look at areas for example blood sugar, digestion, immune health, liver, kidney, inflammation, and more. It is like the big picture map of where you are going. Like Dr. Sheehan mentioned, we order the blood analysis once in the beginning and then we will check it again in a few months, but we don’t have to do it at every single visit.
What If You Already Have Blood Test Results?
A lot of patients will tell me that they already have blood work. What is the difference from what we test for compared to Western medicine? In Western medicine, they are looking for pathology. So, if they don’t see anything that is way out of range or a real clear pathological pattern that they can easily give you a medication for, there is really nothing else they can do.
So, what do they test for versus what we test for? Western medicine doctors usually order tests such as a Chemistry panel and/or a Complete Blood Count panel. They usually run a blood count to rule out things such as Leukemia or really bad anemia. They are basically ruling out medical conditions versus what we test for is not only the blood count and chemistry, but we also order a complete iron panel as one example. This is really important. We also check for a lot of inflammatory markers which are not regularly tested. Examples of these tests are C-Reactive Protein, Homocysteine, and Fibrinogen.
We also order a more comprehensive blood sugar analysis. One of the things that are not done often in Western medicine is a Fasting Insulin test. According to Mosby’s textbook (a textbook used by both medical doctors and chiropractors), this test is the most important indicator of blood sugar stability. We also test for folate and vitamin B12, we run a food sensitivity screening, sometimes we test for specific hormones, and more. In conclusion, medical doctors are looking for overt pathology to rule in or rule out disease, while we are evaluating how the different body systems are working and how they are working together.
What Do We Do With Your Results?
Once we know what is going on – having done the foundational nutrition analysis, the Nutrition Response Testing, and the blood and urine analysis, we have a pretty good picture of what is going on in your body biochemically and what is causing your symptoms. So what do we do about it?
What is our therapeutic approach grounded on? It is grounded on the food that you put in your mouth. We harp on it all the time, but what is so important is the type of diet that you are eating. We have had patients fail because they refused to cut out the foods that they were reacting to. We also have patients who succeed wonderfully when they finally realize that certain foods are making them sick, and they stop eating them.
People will say, “I wish there was a comprehensive study or someone that actually did research into what the right diet is”. There actually was a medical doctor years ago who would feed his patients certain foods and then run a blood test up to five times per day after eating the foods to see how it affected the patient’s blood chemistry. He had his own laboratory in his medical office. His name was Dr. Melvin Page and that is how he developed the Page Diet. This is the main diet that we use in our practice. Dr. Sheehan also calls it “The Normalizing Diet” because it tends to normalize everything.
First, in our therapeutic approach, we help the person with their diet and then we assess how well they digest. Believe it or not, this shows up on a blood test. We also confirm it with muscle testing (Nutrition Response Testing). Then, we go into blood sugar, which unless you order a Fasting Insulin test, is not done properly (this is rarely ordered by Western medicine doctors).
Next, we look at immune function which we back up with the Complete Blood Count panel along with Nutrition Response Testing. Then we look at other organs, areas of stress, and so forth.
How Do We Help People?
We use primarily diet guidance. Then we use supplementation to give the body more energy and information to get the healing process moving. Next, we continue with exercise and lifestyle factors which are also extremely important. For example, we recently had a patient who was finally able to recover from a chronic autoimmune issue by learning how to calm his mind.
Another example, we had a patient who was diagnosed with a type of autoimmune disease by their medical doctor. After doing our assessment, we found that he had an imbalance in his immune system and a blood sugar imbalance. His medical doctor never ran a Fasting Insulin test, which of course, we did. He was also seeing another nutritionist who was giving him a diet for weight loss, however it was the wrong diet for what was wrong with him. Now, after a couple of weeks on our program, his chronic pain is almost completely gone. Therefore, it is important to make a correct assessment and use the correct treatment tools, then the patient usually gets better much more quickly. However, sometimes it may take longer to heal if the person has had chronic or more severe symptoms. Sometimes you must rebuild a person’s capacity for healing before they will even being to feel better. Basically, we have the tools to assess where this person is in their healing journey.
The Advantage of Our Natural Approach
In addition, all our recommendations are completely natural and safe. We never use anything that could possibly hurt you, so we would never use surgery or medication which have many side effects. The nutritional supplements that we use do not cause side effects, especially the whole food ones. That is the advantage of our therapeutic approach. We use diet, lifestyle modification, and supplementation. However, if a patient does need a medical referral, we are not shy about referring a patient to the proper medical specialist. Our practitioners know what they can handle and what they cannot. We are not anti-medical; we just believe that a lot of things can be handled naturally and that they should be handled naturally.
Ready to Get Started?
If you would like to get started on the program, as we mentioned above we have every new patient watch our introductory videos on Nutrition Response Testing and fill out a survey. These videos will prepare you for your first visit and will also save time so that Dr. Sheehan can focus on you and your health needs! Once you fill out the survey, we will contact you to set up your first appointment and review our fees. Click here to watch the videos.
Not Sure If This Is The Right Program For You?
If you are local and you have additional questions for one of our practitioners, sign up for a free 15-minute phone consultation to see if our program is right for you! Laura will discuss your current symptoms, what solutions you have tried so far, and answer any questions about your case. Laura will also be going over the assessments that we discussed above as well as details about how to get started.