People Want Results and That’s What I’m Here For!
To help people feel comfortable coming to our office for medical care, we’ve done a number of things:
Our office is at 3500 John F Kennedy Parkway, Suite 210, Fort Collins, CO. It is quiet yet private. Our entrance is handicap accessible and there is an elevator up to my office.
We have early and late hours to accommodate people’s schedules: Mondays and Tuesdays we work until 6 pm and most days we start at 8 am. People appreciate this!
Our staff strives to be sensitive and personable and understanding.
We offer coffee, tea and other condiments, as well as magazines and music and comfortable chairs.
And did I forget someone? We have a“happy greeter dog” to meet you. Sammy joined us in 2016 and is a “mellow lab,” greeting you with a wagging. He’s a practical example of a service dog in action.
It is stressful for many to come to a doctor and deal with life’s troubles, and a number of therapists and psychiatrists in the country have found pets help people take their minds off themselves for a moment. A dog’s accepting and cheerful attitude can also be infectious! And what better to complete the homey environment than a dog?
As a trained physician, my approach is “driven by the evidence.” The days of a doctor just making educated guesses is long gone. We have evidence now to inform us of what medications work for what concerns, and likewise what counseling strategies work for what specific concerns. We even have a deeper understanding of the nature of the underlying brain structures that are not working right.
For instance, with depression, a major factor in depression is thought to be with early life stress activating the otherwise dormant s allele of the promoter region of the SERT gene (SLC 6A4), which leads the serotonin nerves to make defective serotonin reuptake transporters (SERT), thereby causing the serotonin nerves to be ineffective in reabsorbing serotonin it has released. This is a major way serotonin nerves “recycle” serotonin by reabsorbing and repackaging it so its readily available to be released again. (1)
Another study found antidepressants stop the reduction in serotonin 1A receptors due to stress, allowing serotonin nerves to better respond to stress and calm down the depression center in the brain (thalamus) and fear center (amygdala). This also allows the brain to more dynamically respond to “natural remedies,” too. Exercise releases about 4 times more nerve growth factor in rats that used an antidepressant compared to rats that ran 2 kilometers per night and didn’t use an MAO inhibitor antidepressant. I have a number of patients using daily exercise and medication and exposure to sunlight to “beat back” their depression, when medication alone didn’t give good enough results.
The Information Age has truly brought about much healing in the area of mental health by allowing us to understand our brain more effectively.