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…
Glucose is a high-ranking buzzword these days in the health and wellness realm, with new research and technology being funneled into gaining a closer understanding of what controls glucose (blood sugar) levels in the body and how these levels impact health. New devices have come onto the consumer healthcare scene promising an inside look at…
There is no denying that gut health has become one of the most researched areas in science over the last decade. With more and more studies associating significant drivers of health with gut health, it’s hard to ignore the importance of building and maintaining strong internal health. Luckily, by exposing the body to the “right”…
The clock is ticking. How healthy are you? How healthy do you feel? If you’re lucky, at age 45 you have another 45 years still to live. How do you want to live out those years? Your body is smart and wants to be healthy. Unfortunately, many of us are “undoing” what it knows to do…