Achieving your best health can often seem straightforward, at least in theory. All it takes, a bounty of evidence has found, is adopting a lifestyle that balances activity, nutrition, socialization, and rest. In reality, it’s usually not that easy. Life can be busy with work, family, and technology. This can make it hard to prioritize our health. What…
What are the Benefits of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy? With every breath we take, our lungs fill with a life-giving substance: oxygen. Oxygen, along with nitrogen and carbon dioxide, are among the main elements that contribute to life on this planet and the living things that call it home. For humans, oxygen is necessary for proper…
“You are what you eat” isn’t just a silly idiom: every morsel of food and drink we consume is broken down, processed, and absorbed by the body at a cellular level, for better or for worse. Nutrition is the cornerstone of internal health, therefore, food we eat is a direct reflection of our overall health.…
Living a healthy lifestyle means staying consistent with healthy behaviors, including eating well, staying active, warding off stress when possible, and getting great sleep. If you ask any functional medicine provider what they consider the most impactful aspect out of all of these behaviors, the likely and unanimous answer would be sleep. The health benefits…
Optimizing your health as you age means taking proactive steps to understand where your health stands currently, and determining what interventions or protocols are needed to evolve from disease management to a state of total well-being. Lab testing is typically the first frontier of information a provider and patient must gather in order to assess…
As we age, the body can experience a typical host of changes, most of which are physically noticeable: greying hair, postural and body composition changes, deepening wrinkles on the skin. Physical attributes of older age stem from cellular changes in the body associated with the aging process. Hormone depletion occurs naturally with age, which can…
Health, as many define it, is the absence of disease. Health is also commonly thought of as a prescription from a doctor or a yearly checkup. The truth is, health is all around us. Factors in our environment and daily lifestyle can either support health or undermine it. Unlike the obvious doctor’s visits, exercising, or…
The holiday season is typically a time of year when health becomes a second thought. It can mean more emphasis on family obligations, travel, hosting, cleaning, cooking, and eating what was cooked. In many cases, the “stretched thin” feeling can disproportionately affect women, who – let’s be honest – often take on a brunt of…
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski, MD, ABFM, ABOIM, ABAARM, Medical Director & Provider at Essential Health – Raleigh, NC, is expertly trained in both medical and lifestyle approaches to improving health at the cellular level. Read on to learn more about what cellular health means and how you can take simple steps today to support your body,…
RALEIGH, N.C. — For more than three years, I have been fighting the never-ending feeling that my body is failing me. It doesn’t look or function the way I would like it to. Extreme stress and unhappiness at work manifested as near-constant neck and shoulder pain. Leaving my job and career in February 2020, unrelated…