Rethinking Health: Discover How Functional Medicine Can Reverse Chronic Illness

Feeling stuck with “normal” labs and lingering symptoms? We sat down with functional nurse practitioner Laurie Love to unpack how a root-cause, systems approach can turn the tide on chronic illness—and why small, consistent changes beat quick fixes every time. Laurie  shares her journey from ICU nursing and conventional primary care to functional medicine, where the focus shifts from diagnosing and matching a pill to building health so disease has less room to thrive.

Together, we explore the stark rise in preventable chronic disease and what that means for families, especially children facing metabolic risks far too early. Laurie breaks down the differences between acute care—where conventional medicine shines—and the complex reality of long-term conditions like diabetes, hypertension, fatigue, and autoimmune issues. You’ll hear how functional medicine personalizes care through detailed life timelines, from birth history to stress patterns and environmental exposures, then uses data to target the real drivers: gut health, micronutrient status, hormones, mitochondria, sleep, and stress.

We dive into labs with a fresh lens, explaining why “optimal” beats “average” and which foundational tests reveal the most without getting lost in expensive rabbit holes. Expect practical, doable steps you can start today: eat closer to how our grandparents did, protect sleep like medicine, get morning light, move daily, lift a bit heavier, breathe on purpose, and spend time outside. These keystones create momentum that supplements and medications can’t match alone.

If you’re ready to swap symptom-chasing for health-building—and want a clear roadmap to feel better for good—this conversation offers concrete next steps and vetted resources, including how to find certified functional medicine providers at IFM. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a quick review to help more people discover the show. Then tell us: what one habit will you change first?

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Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share  the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.

Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day! 
In Health, 

Shelly

Transcript

The Wellness Wake-Up

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is a time and a calling that we should all pay attention to because chronic illness is exploding in our country. I think we just need to take a breath. We need to get back to those basics. We need to eat like our grandparents did. We need to go to bed early. We need to stop looking on our phones and get natural light and breathe and sit out in our backyard and enjoy and laugh more and pet our animals if you like animals and just enjoy because this is the only vessel we're given and we need to take care of it and be healthy and enjoy life.

Meet The Host And Mission

Introducing Lori Love

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Do you get confused by all of the information that bars us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing? What foods you should or should not be eating? How to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hello everyone, and welcome to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly, and I'm so grateful for those of you who are tuning in, and for those of you who have been listening. And I can't believe we are into our third year. Time flies, as they say, when you're having fun. And I am very excited to introduce my guest for today. And she and I have been friends for many, many, many years. We go way back, and I'm just so proud of her and what she has accomplished locally. And she's an she's a functional nurse practitioner, and she is the owner of a local practice called compassionate health care. And welcome, Lori Love, to Words of Wellness.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Hi, Shelly. I'm really excited to be here. And I know you and I have talked over the two, three years since you've been doing this, uh, trying to connect with our schedules so that I can come on your show and um share some of my ideas and and what I I do.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yes, and I'm excited that it's it's happening. I know it just sometimes it just takes some working out schedules back and forth. And so here we are. And I uh, you know, I just love what you do, and I and I know we've talked about this and I have shared this, but for our listeners, you know, I've seen Lori evolve into uh she became a nurse and she'll share some of that, but also seeing her evolve into having her own practice and what she does and offers to to her clients is is really amazing. So I would love for you to share a little bit about that and how you got into becoming a functional nurse practitioner.

Why Functional Medicine

Chronic Disease By The Numbers

SPEAKER_00 4:09

So um, and thank you again for having me on and and your to your listeners tuning in and giving me this opportunity to talk about functional medicine. My whole goal in doing this is just continue to spread the word about functional medicine. It's not a new concept, it has been around for over three decades, but it is becoming more mainstream and I'm very excited about that because it is all about um health and improving our health and longevity, uh, understanding chronic disease and how we can protect ourselves against chronic disease and how we can heal from chronic disease if we already are starting to have symptoms. So I really appreciate the time and space to come on and um talk with your listeners. Um, I am a family nurse practitioner. I'm board certified in family practice, and uh I won't say how long, it's because it's been a while. And I've been out here in this valley for over 20 years, have had my own practice for 16 of those um over 20 years. I haven't even counted, I guess I should. Um, and early on in my nurse practitioner career, I started to recognize that I wasn't feeling fulfilled in how I wanted to help people. Um, when I was an ICU nurse, I was determined not, you know, I helped many people on the ICU, many people, you know, pass over in the ICU. And I wanted to be more proactive before they got to the ICU. And this is why I became a nurse practitioner. So I had visions of my practice and my uh how I was going to help people in the in terms of like a more functional medicine approach, but that's not really what I learned in school. What I noticed very quickly is that I would be listening to a patient, they would have all of their symptoms and I'd be making check boxes in my head, trying to figure out, okay, what's going on, what are my differentials, what tests should I order, so that I could give them basically a pill. Those are the two tools we have on our tool belt in in conventional medicine, either a medication or a um a surgery, basically. And I what I realized is it was this revolving door that they kept coming back and that I was really just managing their symptoms and I really wasn't helping them in the level or at the level that I thought I would be as a uh nurse practitioner. At the same time, I had my own health um concerns or my own health issues, and I had entered into the health um system and wasn't getting answers for my own health concerns, you know, tests and imaging, and that wasn't um uh coming out to be what I thought it would be. I wasn't getting any answers, and the best I got was you can take two of those pills and then come back in three months and we can talk about it. On this, at around the same time, I went to conference where a speaker, Dr. Jeffrey Bland, who is known as the father of functional medicine and a brilliant, brilliant man, um, was speaking at this conference. And I quickly realized that I needed like two or three prerequisites to even understand them. He was going way back into the biology and physiology of our body. And but I knew it was a calling uh as I was talking to him. I said, I thought to myself, this is what I was meant to do. This is what my calling is and why I was put on this earth to help people in this way and really, really heal. Um, and this is a time and a calling that we should all pay attention to because chronic illness is is exploding in our country. Uh, seven out of 10 deaths among American Americans each year are from preventable chronic diseases. Um, 61% of our children ages five to 10 have one or more risk factors for heart disease, and uh 27% have two or more risk factors for heart disease. So it the numbers are not getting any better. Cancers are increasing, uh, treatment options are being res the cancers are resisting them, um, even heart disease is up. Uh, even though the we're getting better at managing it and treating it, the incidence is still up. So functional medicine kind of speaks to that. And um this is why I'm here to talk about it in hopes that I can spread the word and and help people understand what functional medicine is and um how we can help change the trajectory of our health in this nation.

Prevention, Purpose, And Kids’ Health

SPEAKER_01 8:58

I love that, and it's so critical. All of the things that you're saying, and it's it's so interesting to go back and think yes, functional medicine has been around for a very long time, but it's finally getting the attention it deserves, it seems, right? Uh like many things when it comes to our overall health and wellness, but it's just so critical, like you're saying, to be able to understand and take steps to uh prevent, hopefully prevent us from getting sick. And I know I've shared this often, but I know that when my mom was diagnosed with cancer and then she lost her battle, and then my dad had various uh metabolic disorders, and then he lost his battle, both of those times kind of lit a fire under me to do more. I mean, you and I both know we've both been in this field for a really long time, but I I feel like when you're saying you you discovered and realized that it was your calling. I mean, I just I love that because it's it's so evident because you are so good at what you do, and I feel like I felt the same way. Like, I feel like it's my calling to share more and to do more, and also I've always felt like whatever we can do that's in our power and our control to feel our best, to be our healthiest, and to hopefully prevent future disease, then we we we owe it to ourselves and our families to do that. And like I always say, there's no guarantee. I mean, God has the final say, but whatever we can do and do our best and then enjoy our lives at the same time is always kind of my motto, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Well, and I um I'm dedicated to the next generation, these kids that are growing up sick, basically. And there's some data out there that says that the children today they're they're not gonna outlive their parents, and and that's not acceptable. So we need to change what we've been doing. And I really believe that you know, functional medicine is one of those steps in understanding chronic illness and how to prevent it and how to protect our health, and um understand the chaos in our world and how it is taxing our body and opening the door to disease in terms of our behaviors and just how our societal norms have changed. And um, so and I was my first patient. I I meant to say that earlier, you know, I started practicing on myself after I saw Dr. Jeffrey Bland's um lecture. And I was like, you know, this makes sense to me, but I'm going to do this. And it it's not an instant gratification as a society. We are very accustomed and expect this instant gratification. Give me a pill, let me just, you know, move on with my life. Rightfully so, we don't want to feel sick, we don't want to be, you know, having these symptoms, we want to move on and enjoy our lives, like you're saying. Um, however, there are lifestyle behaviors um that we do as a society and what we're being exposed to, as well as some behaviors that we have that are really, you know, um preventable things that we can change uh and and prevent this chronic illness epidemic that we are seeing in our society now.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Well, and I think you the way that you're you're sharing, it's it's we have to take steps now. There, there's not any question about that. And and I know I've I've mentioned that in the past as well, is like we have to take take the take the proactive approach. And there's no just hanging out and waiting, see, waiting to see what's what's gonna happen. I mean, we have to take steps now if we want to be here for our grandkids and we want our future kids to be around, our future grandkids to be around and have that longevity that everyone should have to be able to feel good and have that energy and have it for a lifetime. And when you share the statistics, it's just it's heartbreaking, especially when we learn about children having these experiences. It's just heartbreaking, it should never be that way.

Lifestyle Change Over Quick Fixes

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Our kids having fatty liver disease, needing uh liver transplants. I mean, I was an ICU liver transplant, that's not acceptable to me, right? And these are preventable things, you know, 400% increase in diabetes over the last 30 years worldwide. What is what are we doing wrong? Where are we where do we take the wrong turn in in our health and and how we look at our body? Um, and so again, I think functional medicine provides that roadmap. It's not that I think it does, it provides that roadmap to change and look at the health status of our um society and and what uh what are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? And how can we make this change so that we have healthier children, we have healthier next generation to take over our world, right? They need they need to be here and they need to uh be healthy to do that, and and that's not what we're seeing. It's not even being proactive, is that we should have been doing this 10, 20 years ago when I first started this, but it wasn't as widely accepted. I think I've shared this with you that when I first started practicing functional medicine, I had to be a little cautious of who I talked to about this. You know, I I worked at UCLA and I it wasn't favored to talk like this, you know, to say that food is medicine and you can feel better if you change the way you eat, or maybe you shouldn't be eating gluten or getting good rest. And and and now some of those same people that were naysayers and you know, saying it's quackery and I'm a witch and whatever else they said about me and telling people not to come and see me because I'm telling them how to eat better and sleep better and move better and you know, watch that exposure to this toxin or that heavy metal, um, are sending patients to functional medicine providers, not only myself, um, but you know, seeking out even learning themselves about functional medicine. And those that don't, those healthcare practitioners or doctors that don't want to are telling their patients, you know, I think we've hit the end of the road. I can't help you anymore. Go see Lori Love or go see another type of functional medicine provider because they have really, you know, helped some of the patients that I see turn their health around.

Conventional Vs Functional Models

SPEAKER_01 15:57

And that's just incredible. And again, kudos to you and what you're doing. And it's so true. And I think we were talking earlier about how the differences between conventional medicine and functional medicine. And I think you said it so beautifully. It's like we need both, and they complement both. It's it's just that we, I mean, they complement each other, but it comes back to again finding out what is the root cause of these issues that we are experiencing. And I think that that's and correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like that's the key in all of this, and that's the key when we're talking about functional medicine is that we're looking at what is the cause rather than just treat a symptom. Let's find out, go around and find out what's exactly causing it so that we can treat it in a successful manner, right? So that it doesn't keep coming back.

Personalized Root-Cause Approach

Optimal Labs, Not Just Normal

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Right. And so you're absolutely right. The healthcare model right now, in terms of chronic illness, is set up to manage the disease and not really look at the root cause in that individual and personalize why does this person have diabetes? Why does this person have high blood pressure or whatever chronic illness they have? Because there's different reasons for that in everybody and how they express health and disease. And so, yes, I blend conventional with functional. Again, I was, I like to say I was born and raised in the whole conventional world and got all my education through more of a conventional model and actually worked for over 19 years in a prominent school teaching other nurses how to be a nurse practitioner. But it was very much that conventional uh sick model and managed care. And this is where I feel like we have a blind spot in our healthcare system and how functional medicine can complement or take over where that chronic illness is and prevent chronic illness, right? So I'm seeing a lot of patients right now that have never heard of functional medicine. Early on, when I had first opened my practice and into, you know, a good 10 years, 12 years into my practice, um, people that sought me out knew about functional medicine. They they had a fairly good understanding and had done research on the internet or heard a friend or a family member that had it helped. But now I'm seeing people that have never heard of functional medicine and they just want to feel better. And they're taking the medication and following their provider's advice and and you know, with all innocence and good faith and everything, and they're still not feeling better. And they might, some of them are even feeling worse. And so they are being told by a neighbor or family member, just go see this person. And so they'll plop down in a chair and go, I don't know really why I'm here. I don't think you can help me, but here I am, kind of a thing. And so I take the time to really try to differentiate between the more conventional and the functional approaches so that they see that delineation and really have a good understanding. Um, and I could take the time right now for your listeners just quickly on the differences. So, with conventional medicine, it's a disease model and it's defined that way. That's not saying that I'm calling it or anything, but it is designed to be a disease model and it does very well. That's how we are trained to find the disease. We hear a list of symptoms, we're taught, you know, taught to memorize different differential diagnoses and trying to figure out what this person has so that we can match that with a pill. And it works wonderfully in the acute care setting. If I ended up in the emergency room and they said I needed to be hospitalized for certain treatment, you know, it's more of a magic bullet treatment, street them, a linear approach to whatever is going on with me. I'm the first one to sign up because we in no other country I rather be in. This is the country we do a great job on the acute care. We try to apply that same model to the chronic illnesses that we're seeing in our society, this linear approach, this you know, magic bullet. And the truth of the matter, as a human species, we're just too complicated to um, you know, this linear magic bullet approach. And the argument is that if it was working, we would have a much healthier society. And those are not the statistics we're seeing. This is not what we're um hearing, you know. I recently read only about eight to maybe 12% of our population is metabolically healthy. That and that, you know, is really scary to me. Um, and I don't know if children are included in that, but the health of our children is where my passion is. Um on the functional side, that's where functional medicine shines. It's a health model, it's an optimal health model. I like to say it's this it's scientific wellness, right? So functional medicine is the science of creating health as opposed to the science of treating disease. And if you create health, then disease goes away as a side effect. And these are not my words. These are words that I was trained in through the Institute of Functional Medicines from some of the most amazing mentors and experts that paved the way in this field. Um, and it's true. I've seen it with my own eyes. I saw it with me. I healed myself. I see it, you know, every week, every day in my patients that do the work and understand, you know, and and try to understand how their body is expressing health and disease based on how they are living their life and what their exposures are. So, you know, I go through that with my patients and try and helping them understand that it's not just treatment. The moment and what your complaints are right at this moment. It's looking at your whole life. It's your timeline. How did you end up in my office? What have your life experiences been and your exposures been? And they begin in the womb when your mom's growing that other human being, you to birth, how you were birthed, but if you were breastfed, whether you went bottle fed, when were you given formula? What type of formula? When did you have your first food? You know, uh finger food, what was it? Did you take a lot of antibiotics as a baby because you had a lot of ear infections? You know, you're setting up that microbiome on how healthy, and that's where health begins, actually, in our gut. So I go through all this with my patients and telling them we're looking for root cause. This is root cause personalized medicine because we have all of us express health and disease differently depending on those life exposures and our genetics, right? It begins with our genome and then our life experiences, trauma, toxins, diet, sleep, stress, all of that. And then those symptoms start to occur. And then that's when disease happens. And in the conventional world, we kind of live in that outer range of just symptoms and disease, and we're not taking a deeper dive into what are those root causes for this person? Because our life experiences are individual, they belong to us, and that's how, you know, we're a sum of all of those experiences. And that's the difference in that personalized medicine because we don't all, you know, if if we have high blood pressure, then there's different reasons why somebody may have high blood pressure, right? Uh on a more deeper level than just that the blood pressure is high and you know, can put damage on the organs and everything. I'm not denying any of that, but maybe they're very stressed, maybe they're overweight and stressed, maybe there is a nutrient deficient, maybe there's a toxin overload. The body's in crisis, it's in stress mode, it's trying to tell you, it's trying to talk to you. And and that's another point that I try to share with my patients too, is that when I'm wearing my more conventional hat, I'm trying to figure out what disease do you have? And then what pill can I give you? When I'm wearing my functional head or hat, I'm like, what is her body trying to tell her her? What is his body trying to communicate that there is an imbalance, there's a disruption in these body systems. So functional medicine, it sounds really fancy. I know we've talked about this, and I say this also to my patients. It sounds really fancy, but it's really getting back to the basic science of how the body works and understanding that it's a body system, systems, and they all are interacting and connected with each other, and it's a network of communications through enzymes and hormones and neurotransmitters and other substances and proteins in our body that communicate. And when one body system is off, other body systems try to pick up the slack and and try to help out. And and and so it's not just one linear approach, is what I'm trying to get at, because we are so complex as um human species, and our world has changed. And so we're adapting to the world change that we all kind of enjoy these modern conveniences and um some not, some yes, and and um that is uh causing us to evolve and adapt, but some of that adaptation is disease.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

It's so true. Gosh, this is such important, such important information. And you know, I I think when you talk about how everything is connected, it I often think about when a female becomes pregnant, when you think about what a miracle that is, how everything has to come together. This is kind of like obviously this is magnified because our bodies, our systems, everything works together. It's not just one separate organ. If something is off, it's going to affect everything. And and I love too that you mentioned um the word optimum, because that's something that's been coming up for me over the course of the last year or two, understanding that yes, we need to have our physicals, we need to need to have blood work done, we need to have the lab work done. And it was kind of a light bulb moment for me when I realized a lot of the figures and the averages on like blood work and lab work, it's it's an average. And I went, I didn't think about it as being, yeah, but I want to be optimum. So if we're like borderline, that's certainly not optimum, right? And so that was something that really I had an aha moment a year or two ago when I was reading, I think it's the good energy book. Um, and and that that was discussed about the optimum labs, right? So I get like in most everything in life, it's like we have this average where we take, you know, the sum of everyone and we get these average numbers or values. Well, uh for our personal health, like I'm like, I don't, we don't want to be average, we want to be optimum, right? We want to feel our best. So I think that that's kind of an interesting concept that I hadn't heard of until just, like I say, the last year or two. And that was really kind of eye-opening for me.

Simple Tweaks With Big Impact

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Yeah, those reference ranges are designed to capture the masses, right? The general population with um, you know, variations in in those levels. And we talk a lot about that in functional medicine, that we are looking at your lab work through a different lens. And of course, there is, you know, we can start with some basic labs. It doesn't have to be the fancy functional tests, which there are plenty of, where you're looking at mitochondrial health and you're looking at gut microbiome and you know, toxins and other heavy metals and hormonal disruptions and everything. There are definitely expensive fancy tests to do all that, and and and they are fascinating and interesting to do, and sometimes it is required to do to kind of get down into the weeds of what's going on with somebody and the and the root cause of that. But just to start, you know, getting a good comprehensive panel of blood work and and urine and evaluating it from an optimal level for that person and personalizing it to some of the symptoms that they're having to see if it explains some of the symptoms they're having and trying to optimize that number through food first. If there's a huge gap, then we use a good quality supplement for a short period of time and then maintain with food, hopefully, if that's available to the person. And and it makes a world of difference to somebody that has heard, oh, well, your labs are fine. I don't know why you feel this way. And but, you know, move along because you don't have disease. And really, that's what our we're trained. And I and I don't mean any disrespect. This is how we are trained, this is how I was trained. Just reassure them everything's fine on their blood work. But when you take it in the context of looking for root causes and trying to explain from a systems biology of why they may be feeling those symptoms and that this lab isn't as optimal as it could be, or this one's just a little under, maybe not even in the reference range. And then you talk about what, you know, what are they eating, how well are they sleeping, are they moving, what does their stress level look like? There's a lot of work that can just be done on that very basic level of how the body functions. And many, many people come back with feeling great, and we're not even diving any deeper because there it was just kind of looking at it in a lens of how can we optimize your labs? How can we, you know, look at some of your lifestyle behaviors and see if they're contributing to many of your symptoms.

Stress, Sleep, And Inflammation

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Well, and I think that's such an important point, as it's coming comes back to so often lifestyle and sometimes it just need just a few tweaks can make a difference. And you can you are that person that can point it out to people if they're not realizing and not understanding it, and there's certain things maybe they're not seeing. And I remember sharing with you how my my sister had asked me, What did what did you do for when you started menopause? What did you take? And I was like, nothing. And you were like, Yeah, it's your lifestyle, it's your nutrition, your exercise, your movement. And I'm like, Yeah, you know, I know that that has contributed and really helped me a lot. And so I'm grateful for that. And I think that that's such such a key point for people to understand that, you know, if you just take a little bit of it and audit, right, of what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. And and sometimes we don't realize what we're doing until we actually take a little bit of an overview, and then we can see where are some areas that maybe we could change just a little bit that could really have a huge impact on our overall wellness and our and our longevity.

Back To Basics And Joy

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Yeah, you see that very well. Yes, and and recognizing that our society has changed, and there, you know, are a lot of obstacles and chaos out there, and um, and that is breaking down our systems for many people. And I'm always talking about like if we all just jump off the hamster wheel together, maybe this stress hamster wheel won't be going on, you know? The stress on the body, whether it's internal or external, physical, emotional, it it breaks the body down, and then from there inflammation starts, and then from there, symptoms, and then you just you know move on to disease. And so we've played down stress in our society for so long, and like, oh, it's just stress, I'm fine, but it's it's not, it's not fine, and you know, recognizing that, and that's not to say that our bodies are not designed to rev up and and be on and and be productive and have that drive, but it also needs the complimentary, calming down, restorative um cleansing of the body when and getting good sleep that really is important. And that's where we've um lost that in our our society, in our communities, we feel like we got to keep up. There's no time, we're all stressed out. There's the kids, there's the family, there's the work, there's societal expectations. And um, I think we just need to take a breath. We need to get back to those basics. We need to eat like our grandparents did. We need to go to bed early. We need to stop looking on our phones and the get natural light and and breathe and um sit out in our backyard and and enjoy and and allow, laugh more and pet our animals if you like animals and and just enjoy because um this is the only vessel we're given and we need to take care of it and and um and and be healthy and enjoy life.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

That's so such a perfect way to to finish off because I know we could continue, and I would love to have you on again and and maybe kind of unpack some in more information when it comes to women's health and hormones and menopause, because that that's a whole other conversation. And I know there's so many other areas that we can we can discuss. And I just I thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise and your knowledge and your heart, because I know listeners you can tell that Lori's very authentic and she's very caring about what she does. And if you're fortunate enough to to be local and be able to see her as your provider, which I get to do, um, she's absolutely amazing. And I just thank you. Thank you for your time today. I appreciate you so much.

Next Steps And Resources

SPEAKER_00 34:04

You're very welcome. Thank you for allowing me to come on your show or your podcasts and talk to your listeners. And um, you can find functional medicine providers on ifm.org if that uh you're interested in seeing a functional medicine provider. Uh they list them all out there certifications, um, doctors, location. You just put in your zip code and they'll give you a list because this it's international. This is not, you know, a little fad here. So um I encourage your listeners to to jump on the IFM webpage and and look around and learn more about functional medicine because they're doing extraordinary work at the Functional Medicine Institute, their Institute for Functional Medicine, they're doing amazing work there. That's great.

Closing Gratitude And CTA

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Thank you for sharing that. I will put that in the show notes and I will also put uh Lori's information in the show notes for for any of you who are local and uh would like to you know set up a time with her. I highly, highly encourage it. And just thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you so much. And to all of our listeners, take time for yourself and your wellness on this day. And until next time, have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week. And we'll see you next time on Words of Wellness. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed weekend.