What to Expect on your journey:

Step 0: The Complimentary Discovery Session

Every journey begins with a complimentary 20-minute video consultation.

  • The Blueprint: After completing a brief overview of your current health concerns, we sit down virtually to discuss your major goals, outline our practice workflows, and evaluate your case.

  • The Strategic Goal: This is a screening session designed to determine which clinical track matches your needs and readiness for change before you invest any financial resources. To protect your safety, no medical diagnoses or treatment advice are given on this call.

Step 1: Deep-Dive Clinical Case Engineering

If we mutually agree that our clinic is the right fit, you will formally onboard and secure your Initial Assessment. This triggers our deep-dive investigation phase.

  • Your Homework: We will send you an incredibly detailed intake questionnaire, along with a medical records release form. We intentionally give you a robust amount of "homework" to complete on your own time so we don't have to waste your expensive consultation hours gathering basic timelines.

  • Dr. Zeke's Backend Prep: Once submitted, Dr. Zeke dedicates a full, independent 50-minute block of time strictly to charting your history, cross-referencing your medical records, and architecting your custom introductory laboratory orders.

Step 2: The Initial 60-Minute Assessment

With your clinical timeline fully mapped, we meet for your 60-minute face-to-face telehealth evaluation.

  • The Framework: We review your historical data, conduct a tailored visual physical assessment over the high-definition webcam, and finalize the exact diagnostic strategy needed to rule out baseline system failures.

  • The Deliverable: You will leave this session with your custom laboratory orders and immediate, introductory lifestyle guidance.

Step 3: Comprehensive Baseline Screening Labs

Next, you will complete an itemized panel analyzing 60+ critical biomarkers before any primary treatment protocols begin.

  • Logistics: We work with major, automated laboratory networks. For our US clients, this runs seamlessly through Fullscript. For our New Zealand clients, we hand you a peer-to-peer list to take to your local GP to maximize public subsidies, running any gaps privately via our direct commercial account with Awanui Labs.

  • The Collection: You can choose a local draw site that fits your schedule, or utilize a mobile phlebotomy service to collect your blood right at your home.

Step 4: Targeted Specialty Functional Testing

If baseline blood work reveals deeper, hidden systemic issues (such as advanced gut barrier breakdown, severe neuro-endocrine imbalances, or mitochondrial stalling), we introduce targeted specialty functional testing at this stage.

  • The Strategy: These advanced tests (like the GI-MAP stool sequencing or DUTCH hormone profiling) are complex and require precision. To protect your financial resources, we do not guess or order large bundles of kits upfront. We only deploy the single highest-yielding functional test your specific biochemistry demands.

Step 5: The Master Treatment Protocol

Once your raw lab data lands securely in our digital vault, Dr. Zeke performs a comprehensive biological analysis to translate your data into a cohesive strategy. During your next scheduled 30-minute consultation, we deliver your individualized treatment roadmap.

  • The Plan: Your protocol acts as a personalized instruction manual combining specific dietary overhauls, structured sleep/circadian changes, targeted environmental detoxification, and therapeutic, physician-grade nutraceuticals to fix your underlying biology.

Step 6: High-Frequency Bi-Weekly Strategy Tracks

With your protocol in hand, the real work begins. To prevent burnout and maintain clinical momentum, you will transition into your designated care track (Track A for acute symptom alternatives or Track B for root-cause transformation).

  • The Touchpoints: Instead of rare, overwhelming, multi-hour appointments, you are supported by highly frequent, laser-focused 30-minute check-ins every two weeks.

  • The Focus: These sessions are used to aggressively adjust your supplement dosages based on real-time feedback, hold you accountable to lifestyle changes, overcome operational roadblocks, and track your text-based portal metrics.

Step 7: Objective Retesting & The Graduation Off-Ramp

We do not believe in keeping you on a massive pile of supplements indefinitely. True healing means your body takes over the work.

  • The Off-Ramp: In the final weeks of your active care phase, we run targeted, strategic lab retests. We use these objective biological markers to prove your success, safely wind down your therapeutic supplement protocols, and transition you into your long-term Proactive Maintenance Membership. Our ultimate goal is to get you well as efficiently as possible, and give you the tools to stay well without needing us on a regular basis.

Weighing the Options: The Honest Pros & Cons of Functional Medicine

Choosing how to invest your time, energy, and resources into your health is a massive decision. We believe in complete clinical transparency—functional medicine is an incredibly powerful framework, but it is not the right fit for everyone.

Here is a direct, unfiltered breakdown of what you need to consider before entering care.

🟢 The Pros: What Makes This Approach Highly Effective

  • It Corrects Root Dysfunctions (Instead of Just Masking Symptoms)

    Conventional medicine is brilliant at acute emergency care, but it typically "manages" chronic metabolic issues with lifetime prescription dependencies. Functional medicine addresses the underlying biological malfunctions, allowing your body to actually heal and stabilize itself.

  • A Strategic, Engineered Alternative to Prescription Dependencies

    If you struggle with the systemic side effects of chronic medications, or if you simply want a data-driven, drug-free pathway to wellness, this model provides highly personalized, plant-based, and nutraceutical alternatives backed by rigorous biochemistry.

  • The Answer for Complex, "Mystery" Chronicity

    If you have been feeling constantly exhausted, inflamed, or unwell, and have seen multiple traditional specialists who ran standard labs and told you "everything looks normal," you are likely in the right place. We specialize in mapping out uncommon, overlooked system failures that conventional testing completely misses.

  • High-Frequency Support Prevents Overwhelm

    By replacing long, exhausting multi-hour appointments with highly focused 30-minute touchpoints every two weeks, you stay highly accountable, consistently supported, and capable of pivoting your protocol in real-time without hitting lifestyle burnout.

🔴 The Cons: The Hard Realities of True Healing

  • True Biological Change Demands Real Time

    We are not suppressing symptoms with a quick-fix pill; we are fundamentally restructuring your baseline cellular health. Repairing leaky gut barriers, clearing chronic pathogens, and resetting complex endocrine pathways takes time. Depending on your clinical complexity, it can take months or even years to fully cement your health goals.

  • Radical Lifestyle Modification Requires Aggressive Motivation

    Overhauling your nutrition, re-engineering your sleep architecture, altering your physical routines, and systematically removing toxic exposures from your home environment is hard work. If you are not in a season of life where you can actively dedicate focus to these habits, the higher levels of care will not yield results. We utilize the free Step 0 Discovery Session specifically to protect your resources and ensure you are truly ready for this track.

  • It Requires a Direct Out-of-Pocket Investment

    While Dr. Zeke actually charges less per hour than the true, unsubsidized cost of a traditional specialist, insurance structures do not cover functional medicine architectures. This means you bear the cost of care directly. Over the course of active treatment, functional medicine patients can generally expect an overall healthcare investment between $1,000 and $10,000+ spanning clinical asset fees, targeted functional testing, and physician-grade supplement protocols depending on case complexity.

📋 The Bottom Line: You Get Out What You Put In

Functional medicine is not quick, it is not effortless, and it is not cheap. There are absolutely no shortcuts to reversing chronic metabolic dysfunction.

  • For the Highly Motivated Patient: If you are ready to work hard, demand real answers, and take radical ownership of your biochemistry to fix the root cause of your disease, this approach is life-changing and deeply worth every ounce of investment.

  • For the Patient Seeking a gentler, entry-level path: If you are not ready for a total lifestyle and dietary transformation but still want safe, alternative symptom support, we intentionally built Track A (Targeted Symptom Relief) to meet you exactly where you are today.

There is zero judgment here. Our clinic is built purely on providing the exact level of support, safety tracking, and clinical encouragement you need to step forward.