You are more powerful than you think!

You have an inner strength and intelligence that goes much deeper than you have ever imagined. We encourage you to discover or re-discover and allow this truth to express itself in feelings you have, decisions you make, and actions you take, especially with your health and wellness.

Your inner strength and intelligence has always been there and always will be, because these qualities are built into the design of Nature. And guess what? You are Nature! We urge you to reclaim this truth about yourself. It is your birthright. So much illness and suffering has been created by us as individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities, because we believe that we are separate from Nature. It is time to replace this old way of thinking with a new heart-based belief and way of being:

Human beings are Nature, and Nature is intelligent and powerful!

In this moment, we encourage you to slow your breathing and calm your mind. Drop your attention from your head into your heart. Allow yourself to experience your intelligence (which is Nature’s intelligence) as a subtle feeling of light, love, peace, joy, and infinite creativity. Allow yourself to feel this throughout your body—from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head to your fingertips. Know that this inner intelligence and strength is not just mental or emotional or physical. It is all of them together! This is the true power of you—a self that integrates all aspects of the Self.

We say this here, up front, even before we introduce ourselves, because our intention is to help individuals, families, groups, and communities express and achieve their fullest potential. We humbly put you first, because as healers, we know that faith in yourself is your most powerful medicine to accomplish the following:

• Maintain health and wellness
• Address all forms of illness
• Boost your body’s immune system to maintain and restore your entire being to balance, homeostasis, and vibrant living

Options Naturopathic is a full service natural-medicine clinic dedicated to serving all of your healthcare needs.

We have offices in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and Portland, Oregon and serve patients worldwide. Our team includes licensed naturopathic doctors and patient-support staff who take a heart-based-intelligence approach to helping individuals, families, groups, and communities maintain health and wellness, manage acute and chronic illnesses, and maximize love for life and quality of life.

Our team of doctors has over 30 years of combined experience in the field of holistic health and are affiliated with the Ohio Naturopathic Doctors Association (OHNDA). Our doctors have graduated from federally-accredited four-year naturopathic colleges on the west coast of the United States, where they have earned Naturopathic Doctor (N.D.) degrees. These academic programs include extensive studies in biological science, nutrition, psychology, and complementary therapies such as herbal medicine and homeopathy, among others.

Options Naturopathic Clinic utilizes the following core values to collaborate with and support patients in planning and implementing health, wellness, and healing practices that produce positive long-term results:

• Honor the next right thing
• Evolution of self
• Accountability to our job & purpose
• Revolutionizing healing
• Trust the process

We utilize naturopathic medicine (naturopathy), which emphasizes that your body is a natural and vital lifeforce that has the innate ability to heal itself.

We introduce you to non-toxic natural remedies and lifestyle changes to help you support your body as it activates and maximizes its natural intelligence and strength. Naturopathy embraces many therapeutic options. Some examples include the following:

• Homeopathy
• Herbal medicines and supplements
• Nutritional counseling, including detoxification diets
• Exercise
• Stress management
• Meditation
• Mental health counseling and coaching
• Massage
• Acupuncture
• Cranial therapy
• Chiropractic spinal adjustments

Naturopathic medicine teaches that symptoms of physical, emotional, and mental illnesses serve two basic functions. They are your body’s way of communicating to you that something is wrong. And they are your body’s way of signaling that it is in the process of trying to clear toxins, heal, and recover balance (homeostasis). We assist you in listening carefully to and understanding this information and responding gently and holistically.

With naturopathic medicine, we remove obstacles to the body’s natural intelligence and healing processes and provide healthy stimuli (such as those listed above), which are gentle and powerful but do not further deteriorate the health of the body’s organs, tissues, and systems as some modern pharmaceutical medications do.

We intentionally avoid conventional suppressive therapies, which aim to reduce symptoms without stimulating the body’s natural healing processes. Suppressive therapies often contribute to the progressive worsening of acute and chronic illnesses. Thus, our approach diverges from most conventional medical practices, including functional medicine, because we understand that your body is Nature, and Nature should be supported, not suppressed.

The goal of naturopathic medicine is to treat the whole person, not only your body but also your mind (emotions and thoughts), and spirit.

It also aims to heal the root cause of illness and suffering, not just the symptoms, which are external (or surface) expressions of the underlying conditions.

We help you integrate an understanding of your whole self into daily routines and practices that aim to maximize your health and wellness. To accomplish this, we partner with you to explore the story of your inner life and outer life, which includes a history of your

• Biological health and illnesses
• Psychological health and illnesses
• Social health (e.g., quality of relationships with family members, friends, co-workers, and members of faith communities)
• Environmental health (of your home, neighborhood, and workplace)
• Consciousness health
• Spiritual and energetic health

Knowledge adds to your personal power, because it builds confidence and trust in yourself and your healthcare providers.

It inspires you to informed action. At Options Naturopathic, we are integrative thinkers who partner closely with you, no matter where you are in your journey of health, wellness, or illness management. Our goal is to empower you with useful information.

With us, you are always in control of your healthcare. You choose where you want to place your focus. You choose which new methods to explore for managing your health. The reason is simple. We know from our work with numerous patients that big personal changes—like losing weight, eating more healthy foods, preventing illnesses, and managing chronic conditions like diabetes or cancer—come from a series of small, incremental changes in thinking and behavior over time.

We will guide you through this process of discovering your motivation to change as you take informed action to

• Understand the foundation of your health and wellness
• Prevent illnesses
• Understand the roots of your illnesses
• Maintain and enhance your health and wellness with lifestyle enhancements (e.g., good nutrition, frequent exercise, and reducing anxiety and stress)
• Manage acute illnesses (e.g., bacterial infections, viral infections, inflammation, rashes)
• Manage chronic illnesses (e.g., heart disease, lung disease, asthma, diabetes, cancer)
• Prevent or manage cancer (acute onset and chronic conditions)
• Restore and regenerate health and wellness
• Discover and develop access to your own higher consciousness and use that with confidence to guide your daily health and wellness practices

At Options Naturopathic, we pay close attention to findings from the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study, the largest epidemiological analysis of its kind ever conducted.

The ACE Study continues to show that adverse experiences early in life predict negative health experiences and conditions later in life. The original study explored 10 categories of adverse childhood experience (ACE), including the following:

• Physical, emotional, and contact sexual abuse
• Emotional and physical neglect
• Growing up in a household without both biological parents
• Growing up in a household where . . .
  • Mother was treated violently
  • One member of the household was alcoholic or a drug user
  • One member was chronically depressed or mentally ill
  • One member was imprisoned

We have been utilizing the ACE Questionnaire that was developed from the ACE study to help patients—and parents or guardians of children and adolescents—develop a greater understanding of the link between adverse life experiences and health and mental health conditions.

Our Approach to Trauma and ACEs

We have learned from research literature and extensive clinical observations that experiences of physical and emotional adversity, abuse, and trauma often create intense, chronic, and toxic feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and self-perceptions in the mind and body. These imprints often disrupt or interrupt the natural flow of and collaboration among blood, oxygen, nutrients, hormones, neurotransmitters, and other forms of biological information and lifeforce. In other words, assault, neglect, and other forms of adversity and trauma—especially in childhood and adolescence—often have immediate and long-term (downstream) negative impacts upon health, wellness, development, and maturation.

At Options Naturopathic, we have developed a number of innovations that successfully address negative consequences of trauma and other adverse experiences. These interventions help you and your body get back into the full flow of Nature and its healing intelligence.

People from all walks of life throughout the country and around the world connect with Options Naturopathic for help managing numerous health and mental health complaints and conditions.

Some examples are listed here in (alphabetical order). We invite you to ask us how we might help you understand and manage symptoms and conditions that are unique to you and your children and family.

• Adrenal fatigue
• Allergies
• Anxiety and agitation (chronic and episodic)
• Arthritis, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis
• Asthma
• Autoimmune diseases (e.g., chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia)
• Biotoxin illness
• Bone fractures, sprains, and breaks
• Cardiovascular disease
  • Heart attack prevention and recovery
  • Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Cancer care and prevention
  • Breast cancer
  • Colon cancer
  • Esophageal cancer
  • Pancreatic cancer
• Candida
• Developmental disorders
• Digestive systems concerns
  • Acid reflux
  • Colitis and ulcerative colitis
  • Crohn’s disease
• Eczema (skin disorders)
• Emotional and mental suffering (acute, episodic or chronic)
  • Anxiety and agitation
  • Attention deficit disorders (ADD & ADHD)
  • Bi-polar disorder
  • Depressive moods and depression
  • Lethargy
  • Negative self-talk
  • Paranoia
  • Rumination
  • Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Ewing sarcoma
• Fertility issues
• Glioblastoma
• Hives
• Hormonal imbalance
• Infections and chronic infections (in individuals of all ages)
• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Lethargy
• Lyme disease and counter symptoms
• Menopausal symptoms
• Menstrual conditions
  • Amenorrhea (the absence of menstrual periods)
  • Irregular and painful periods
• Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
• Pain, chronic pain, and inflammation
• Rhabdomyosarcoma
• Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO)
• Sleep disorders
  • Sleep apnea
• Stroke prevention and recovery
• Thyroid conditions (e.g., hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism)
• Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

We encourage you to partner with our naturopathic doctors to maintain a wholistic perspective of your health, wellness, and goals for a vibrant life as you engage with conventional healthcare professionals and systems.

There is much wisdom in contemporary medicine, which has made significant advances in addressing acute and chronic health conditions. It has achieved this through scientific research and specialized experimentation on specific parts of the body and its systems. However, more and more of our patients report that doctors, nurses, and diagnostic technicians in conventional healthcare do not make them feel like a whole person and do not provide adequate answers to their big questions. Instead, these specialists make people feel like an illness or a dysfunction.

We are convinced this occurs because conventional healthcare professionals have become so specialized that they are now experts in a particular part of health and, thus, have a myopic view of life. Many do not know how to see or think wholistically about their patients as complete human beings. And they do not receive encouragement or incentives to do so. This reason is simple. Conventional healthcare is dominated by mammoth-sized healthcare systems that are headquartered in impersonal, corporate hospitals. Executives in charge of these corporations require doctors to spend less and less time with their patients as a way to increase billable time and, thus, profits. It is as if patients have become objects on an assembly line, doctors have become robots tinkering with them, and healthcare has become an illness-management factory whose administrators are mostly concerned with productivity and throughput, like an engineer rather than a healer.

Take control of your health and wellness. Partner with us for guidance and help and learn the big picture of wholistic healthcare that includes all of you, including your body, mind, emotions, spirit, and dreams for the best quality of life possible. Together, let’s put wholistic health and wellness into action.