Chronic Care Management Q & A

Are you having a difficult time managing your health? Are you searching for alternative treatments? At Environmental Health Center–Buffalo (EHC Buffalo), environmental medicine specialist, Dr. Kalpana Patel, provides comprehensive medical care integrating functional and nutritional medicine for patients in Buffalo, New York, and surrounding areas and all over the country. Her care including natural, complementary and alternative therapies to manage a wide range of chronic health conditions. Call the office today or book an appointment online. Phone consultations are also available.

What is a chronic medical condition?
Chronic medical conditions include any medical issue that has lasted longer than three months or can’t be cured with medicine, treatment, therapy, or time.

Examples of chronic medical conditions include:

• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Allergies, asthma, and COPD
• Arthritis
• Cancer
• Obesity
• Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome
• Mental illness

What is chronic care management?
Chronic care management provides medication, special treatments and procedures, therapy, and close monitoring of your condition to prevent added complications or worsening of your symptoms.

How is a chronic medical condition managed?
As an Environmental medicine specialist, Dr. Patel takes a holistic, integrative approach to managing your chronic health condition. She uses a “nail in the shoe” approach, instead of using a bandage approach to cover up your pain. In other words, she elects to find the factors that are causing your symptoms and tries to remove those root causes to improve your health and any underlying chronic conditions.

During your initial consultation with Dr. Patel, she obtains a life-line history to understand your health issues and your specific needs. This also allows her to identify the root cause of your health problems so she can develop an appropriate treatment plan.

What chronic care treatments are available?
At EHC Buffalo, Dr. Patel provides a comprehensive approach to care, incorporating both integrative and environmental medicine practices and developing an individualized treatment plan for each of her patients.

Treatments might include:

• Environmental evaluation to find triggers and plan to control exposure to pollutants
• Diet evaluation to find triggers and to eliminate or rotate foods causing problems
• Nutritional counseling including Rotation Diet
• Prescription of necessary vitamins and minerals after identifying specific deficiencies
• Intravenous infusion of nutrients-antioxidants
• Chelation therapy
• Detox therapies
• Infrared sauna heat depuration therapy with oxygen while in the chamber
• Hyperbaric oxygen therapy

How are allergies managed?
Dr. Patel may use a combination of methods to identify the source of your allergies, including intradermal skin tests, blood tests, and home and job-site testing when necessary.

Once she’s identified the source of your allergy, Dr. Patel develops a comprehensive treatment plan to address your symptoms. This might include Injection or Sublingual immunotherapy and or low-dose allergen (LDA) therapy, which restores your tolerance to indoor and outdoor allergens, foods, chemicals, bacteria, and viruses. Dr. Patel may also prescribe a specialized diet, such as one low in mold, rotation diet -rotating foods according to food groups and may try avoidance of foods you are allergic to, to reduce your total exposure to allergens.

Highly attuned to her patients’ symptoms and needs, Dr. Patel has installed special airlock system, ventilation system, and ceramic  flooring to minimize your exposure to allergens in her center, so you’re comfortable during your evaluation.

For specially designed integrated alternative treatments for your chronic medical condition, call today or use the online booking agent for an appointment.