The Art of Medicine: Personalized Care at Lutanen Health

In a society with ever-evolving health trends, and information, navigating between both traditional medicine and integrative medicine may feel overwhelming. Visits with your primary care physician may appear rushed with focus on checklists, while neglecting important aspects of health such as nutrition, sleep, breath, movement, and the nervous system function.

 At Lutanen Health, we reimagine this experience. We believe in the art of medicine and value of a quality physical exam in addition to understanding our patients as a whole. We take time to understand what’s going on in our patients’ lives and how it may influence their symptoms, creating care plans that are personalized and holistic.

Care At Lutanen Health

From your first visit, we emphasize a blend of traditional and integrative medicine – grounded in science and guided by genuine connection. We begin with a strong physician-patient relationship, built on listening, understanding your full health history and aligning care with your goals and values.  We create care plans that are personalized, proactive and designed around our patients’ goals and values.

Our physicians are trained in both conventional and integrative medicine, enabling us to practice evidence-based care that addresses symptoms and root causes.  This includes comprehensive lab tests, imaging, and tracking biomarkers such as glucose control and heart rate variability in addition to providing tools for prevention and longevity.

Additionally, we focus on the use of preventative tools to support longevity and wellbeing.  Preventative tools are curated to the patient’s lifestyle, lab results, health history, and family history. using new, highly researched technology to assist in detection of cardiovascular risk, to long standing, evidence-based screening protocols such as mammograms and colonoscopies, we are able to gain an understanding of our patients’ health risk to support longevity and wellbeing. We combine our curiosity of new, innovative technologies in addition to long standing, evidence-backed practices for our patients to receive the best personalized care.

Values

Nutrition

Nutrition is a key modifiable factor in the development, prevention and management of chronic diseases. We discuss a patients nutritional habits and provide valuable coaching and education to optimize nutrition for a patient’s lifestyle.

Sleep

Sleep is a fundamental component of overall health and influences many physical and mental health outcomes. Irregular sleep is associated with increased risks of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression and mortality. Using technology and various sleep tests allow us to gain an understanding of our patient’s quality of sleep (Zheng et al., 2024). We leverage technology and validated tools to assess sleep quality and guide interventions.

Breath

Throughout the physical exam, we take time to examine patients’ breath and nervous system patterns. Examining breath gives us insight into a patient’s stress physiology, mind-body connection, core engagement and nervous system state. Controlled breathing shifts the nervous system from fight or flight to rest and digest, which impacts the body physically and emotionally. In addition to observing patients breathing during visits, we encourage patients to find time daily to slow down breath and shift to a relaxation response.

Movement

Gaining an understanding of our patients’ exercise routine, movement patterns, and current exercise physiology gives us a better understanding of patient health, including physical and emotional health.  We track yearly biomarkers such as VO2 max, hand grip strength, and movement assessment. These metrics give us a better insight into a patient’s overall health and risk for disease. For example, higher VO2 max is consistently associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease events (Ekblom-Bak et al, 2017). Additionally, clinicians help understand patients movement patterns through specific movement screening tools Understanding patients’ movement patterns also gives clinicians insight to how a patient moves, mind body connection, and risk for injury.

Connecting our patients with the best care

In addition to our philosophy of integrating eastern and western medicine within our visits at Lutanen Health, we also value our connections within the Boston academic medical centers, and integrative care centers to ensure patients are receiving the best care. Our physicians hold faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School and staff appointment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Our connection within the Boston medical centers gives us the opportunity to refer to and collaborate with highly trained and valued specialists. We strive to learn about new research and technology within the medical space to ultimately create personalized, evidence-based treatment plans for our patients.

Why combining traditional and integrative medicine is essential for long term health

By combining the wisdom of traditional medicine with the proactive, whole-person lens of integrative care, we support health that is not just reactive, but preventative, restorative and patient centered. We strive to empower patients to value all aspects of health

Ekblom-Bak, E., Ekblom, B., Söderling, J., Börjesson, M., Blom, V., Kallings, L. V., Hemmingsson, E., Andersson, G., Wallin, P., & Ekblom, Ö. (2019). Sex- and age-specific associations between cardiorespiratory fitness, CVD morbidity and all-cause mortality in 266.109 adults. Preventive medicine, 127, 105799. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2019.105799

Zheng, N. S., Annis, J., Master, H., Han, L., Gleichauf, K., Ching, J. H., Nasser, M., Coleman, P., Desine, S., Ruderfer, D. M., Hernandez, J., Schneider, L. D., & Brittain, E. L. (2024). Sleep patterns and risk of chronic disease as measured by long-term monitoring with commercial wearable devices in the All of Us Research Program. Nature medicine, 30(9), 2648–2656. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03155-8