Functional Food
By Riley Bunch | Photography by Alice G. Patterson
When Amy Doyle sits down with a patient, she not only wants to hear their symptoms, but their entire health story. She wants to know not only current and past health history, but how they’re sleeping, their stress level and dietary habits and other lifestyle behaviors.
A truth-seeker by nature, all these elements allow Amy to put together the pieces of the puzzle and help people lead more healthy lives through her functional nutrition consultation practice, White Stone Wellness.
While dealing with health challenges of her own, Amy became frustrated with the responses she was getting from professionals in the traditional medical field.
“I was told what I was dealing with was very common, and a lot of my concerns were dismissed by practitioners,” Amy said. “I didn’t subscribe to the paradigm that, ‘If you have this set of symptoms, this is the drug you take.’”
Having always been a foodie, Amy found respite by incorporating functional nutrition practices into her life. Now, after earning a master’s degree in applied clinical nutrition from New York Chiropractic College, Amy uses the same findings to reach others frustrated with their own health issues.
“Rather than treating the person’s set of symptoms, you’re treating the whole person,” Amy said.
Functional nutrition links a patient’s health challenges directly to their body’s digestive process. Nutrition isn’t only about what someone eats, Amy explained, but about the body’s digestion, absorption, utilization and detoxification of that food.
“I become an investigator and really look at what is the root cause of what’s happening in their body,” Amy explained.
Often, Amy has seen that simply cleaning up a patient’s diet can help them become healthier. However, the individualized treatment process can be more extensive, depending on the person and their health issues.
“Functional nutrition is based on the recognition that everybody is biochemically different,” Amy said. “One person could come in with one set of symptoms and another can come in with the same set of symptoms, but they have different needs.”
Amy sees similarities in her own health journey and those of her patients. When a patient reaches her practice, they’re often frustrated. As they begin to understand their specific symptoms, it’s easier to see their illness is something they have and not something they are, Amy said. Since she began her practice, she’s helped more than 70 patients.
One of her goals is to create a center of collaboration between physicians, chiropractors, naturopathic doctors, holistic nurses and nutritionists. It would be a combined effort to give patients access to any type of medical help they may need.
“I would love for Syracuse to be the place where there’s collaboration between allopathic providers, and providers like myself,” Amy said, “because we all have the same goal.” SWM
White Stone Wellness has offices in Willow Heath Wellness, 3090 Belgium Road, Baldwinsville, and the Synergy Center, 4562-4568 Pewter Lane, Manlius. Reach Amy by phone at (315) 527-1453 or email at amy@whitestonefunctional nutrition.com. Learn more at whitestonefunctionalnutrition.com.
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