Dr. Izabella Wentz writes:
I often have people reaching out to me, asking for recommendations for someone who does what I do for the thyroid, but for another condition. So in honor of Pharmacists Month, I thought I would put together a list of colleagues — pharmacists who specialize in a functional medicine approach to various conditions. I hope this will be a great resource for you, or someone you love.
In a broken healthcare system that is centered around disease, functional medicine seeks to address the root cause of illness and restore health to the patient. It is often defined as healing-oriented medicine that takes into account the whole person, including all aspects of their lifestyle. The field is growing rapidly, with approximately 100,000 functional medicine practitioners in current practice.
Pharmacists who practice functional medicine combine their knowledge of health conditions with a therapeutic mindset and a root cause approach that allows them to look at a patient’s health history, lifestyle, and triggers and offer solutions from a holistic point of view. While most people think pharmacists just want to “drug” their patients (and perhaps some do!), I personally studied lifestyle medicine in pharmacy school. We would often recommend lifestyle interventions for mild cases of many conditions, and reserve medications for the times when they were really needed.
Additionally, we were taught to always recommend lifestyle changes in conjunction with medication. It was my training as a pharmacist that led me to question the standard medical paradigm that only recommended thyroid hormones for Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism and didn’t have any consideration for lifestyle interventions! Thanks to this very training, I began to research lifestyle changes for thyroid conditions and started writing Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause.
Everyone’s root causes of Hashimoto’s will be different, as we all have our own unique genetics and lifestyles. My mission as your Thyroid Pharmacist has been to help you uncover your own root causes and assist you on your healing journey. I am excited that there are many others in my field who are using their own knowledge and specialties to help people find healing from a variety of different conditions.
Pharmacists are trained in optimizing treatment options, and I love how many are looking past medications as treatment modalities. I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight a few of the pharmacists with unique specialties whom I respect and recommend. My hope is that those who really need this information will find a helping hand on their journey toward healing.