Anti-Aging

Have you ever looked at someone 10 or 20 years older than yourself and thought, “Wow, that’s how I want to be when I’m there age”.  Do you feel like you are aging faster than you would like?  Would you like to look and feel younger?  Are you willing to invest some time and energy toward that goal?  We can help.

Aging does not have to be a process that involves loss.  Loss of flexibility, loss of function, and loss of memory are the factors that cause us to truly age. 

Aging should be a process of celebration – the wisdom we gain from experience and the success we earn from effort are welcome parts of aging.  The blessings of family and friends, relationships that take many years to cultivate, these too are welcome parts of aging.  With good fortune we are going to get older - the task of anti-aging is to keep our mind and body functioning as they did in our youth.  To that end comes Anti-Aging medicine. 

By addressing many of the predictable changes that occur with aging, we can help reverse or even turn back the clock on some of the mental and physical aspects of aging.  The Integrative Medicine Center (IMC) brings together all the elements of healthcare that are necessary for anyone to achieve their optimal health and thus redefine the aging process.

To achieve Optimal Health Dr. Rollins’ recommends the “Four Pillars” to health:

Behavioral Health

Behavioral health includes eating a healthy diet and getting enough exercise.  It also includes moderating our vices, such as limiting alcohol consumption or stopping smoking.

Issues of mental health are also included with behavior.  Depression or anxiety often goes hand in hand with chronic physical health problems.  We know that physical health is simply unable to fully heal if mental health issues persist.

Even without a formal mental health diagnosis, such as depression, we often encounter resistance to living a healthy lifestyle.  We specialize in working with people to change behaviors that are limiting their health, such as helping them to eat healthier, quit smoking, or start an exercise program. 

Managing stress in a complex modern world is difficult.  Everyday we encounter patients who are being “swallowed whole” by the effects of stress on their health.  While we can’t avoid some of life’s realities and responsibilities, we can learn to create a balance.  When life has our scales tipped far out of balance it is critical that we carve out a little time each and every day to bring things back into balance. 

We also encourage looking for healthy relationships as a critical part of behavioral health.  Whether spiritual as in faith-based, personal as in meditative, or social as in healthy relations with friends and family, the healthy relationship is a cornerstone to a long and happy life.

The IMC has numerous providers to help you take control of behavioral obstacles in your life and make your wishes for change a reality.  Our dietician and athletic trainer can work with you until you make changes with diet and exercise.  Our psychologists and life-coaches are experts at restoring mental health and helping patients change behaviors that are detrimental to their health.  Many of our providers teach classes in yoga, tai-chi, or qigong – all of which are excellent ways to combine exercise with stress reduction.

Supplements

Supplements are simply a means to provide our bodies with the materials needed for optimum performance.  We encourage a basic formula for nutritional support and we add additional custom formulas depending upon your overall health needs.

IV Vitamin infusions provide blood levels of vitamins and nutrients which are much higher than possible by oral supplements.  Certain conditions only respond when the level of nutrients is high enough in the blood to force its way into the cells of our body.

Nutraceuticals are nutritional supplements that provide health benefits in addition to their basic nutritional values.  These include vitamins, minerals, enzymes, fatty-acids, and anti-oxidant formulas. 

Homeopathy is a system of medical practice that treats a disease especially by the administration of minute doses of a remedy that would in healthy persons produce symptoms similar to those of the disease. 

Herbology which is traditionally one of the more important modalities utilized in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).  Each herbal medicine prescription is a cocktail of many herbs tailored to the individual patient.  The practitioner usually designs a remedy using one or two main ingredients that target the illness. Then the practitioner adds many other ingredients to adjust the formula to the patient's yin/yang conditions. Sometimes, ingredients are needed to cancel out toxicity or side-effects of the main ingredients.  Some herbs require the use of other ingredients as a catalyst or else the brew is ineffective.  The latter steps require great experience and knowledge, and make the difference between a good Chinese herbal doctor and an amateur.  Unlike western medications, the balance and interaction of all the ingredients are considered more important than the effect of individual ingredients.  A key to success in TCM is the treatment of each patient as an individual.

The IMC has doctors who are certified in medicine, naturopathy and Chinese herbal medicine.  We can provide a treatment program grounded in both traditional Western medicine and the natural remedies of Eastern medicine. 

Hormone Replacement

Hormones are chemical messengers produced by the endocrine glands throughout your body.  These glands receive signals from your brain telling them how to oversee various functions within your body.  The endocrine system is responsible for the regulation of the body’s temperature, sexual desires, growth, healing, aging and immune system.  It allows the central nervous system to communicate with every cell in the body.  Hormones stimulate a multitude of life-giving processes throughout the body which maintain health, harmony, growth and healing. 

A decrease in production of hormones begins in middle age and continues to diminish in a linear fashion until old age.  Hormone deficiencies affect every cell in the body and result in degenerative changes and aging.  Bringing hormone levels back to a youthful level reverses many of the unfavorable effects that begin to appear as we age.

Many disease processes, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease have been blamed on the aging process.  However, conventional medicine has never treated aging as a disease process nor has it tried to prevent this process.  Now we can look at aging as a significant factor in disease formation and attempt to prevent the symptoms of aging by treating aging as a disease in and of itself.  We have begun to change our thinking that it is normal to deteriorate with age, and therefore acceptable.  Fortunately, we now know that much of this deterioration process is preventable.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) slows cellular degeneration and allows regeneration of tissue, healing and a slowing down of the aging process.

Physical deterioration is not a requirement of growing older!  It is now possible to stop much of the undesirable aspects of aging as well as the symptoms and diseases associated with aging.  HRT is an updated science which has been shown to not only prolong life but improve and prolong the quality of life.

Dr. Rollins and his associates at AdvantAge Integrative Medicine specialize in HRT regimens that will achieve maximum benefits and deter the aging process.  After a consultation and laboratory evaluation a personalized hormone supplementation program will be prescribed for you and monitored until optimal hormone levels are achieved.

 

Elimination and Avoidance of Toxins

The presence of chemicals, metals or infections can slowly accumulate and persist in our bodies over many years causing or encouraging many diseases.  We utilize special testing to find these potential toxins and then eliminate or counteract them.

We screen for heavy metals by using urine or hair analysis and then eliminate metals with oral or intravenous Chelation therapy.  We check for chronic infections with special blood or stool studies and then treat specifically for that infection.  We look for delayed food allergies to over 100 foods with IgG blood tests and have a follow up program to help you eliminate these food toxins from your diet.