Lori Esarey ARNP, A4M Anti Aging Fellowship

Hi, my name is Lori Essery. I'm a nurse practitioner. I practice in the Villages, Florida. My practice name is Total Nutrition and Therapeutics, where we strive to help people go beyond weight loss to achieve wellness for life. I went to the University of South Florida in Tampa. I got my undergraduate there in 1992, and then I went on for my master's degree and became a family nurse practitioner in 1995. I returned to school there at USF several years later and graduated in December of 2012 with my master's in nutritional medicine and metabolic medicine. As a nurse practitioner, I initially practiced in an internal medicine practice in Tavares. I really got some great experience there in internal medicine for a number of years and then I moved up into the Villages six years ago. My husband was practicing at the time as a podiatrist there and I really loved that community. It's a retirement community. People want to live well, they want to be well, they want to achieve their best. I mean, they play golf, they play pickle. Constantly active and they want to remain active. And so being in a community, doing what I do, teaching nutrition for optimal wellness, it's the perfect venue to do it because I truly, truly believe that you can change your health through nutrition. I mean, Hippocrates said it a long time ago, you know, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. And I believe that. So initially that's how my clinic actually started and it's evolved more into a functional medicine practice. We're looking at biomarkers. I mean, we're looking at advanced lipid profiles, we're looking at insulin levels, we're looking at predictive factors for diabetes. We're looking at gluten sensitivity and other food related allergies, cross sensitivities, stool testing for bacteria, pathogens, yeast, those type of things. So it's a very exhaustive way of individualizing a plan for a person. You know, the people that enter my clinic, the majority of them have been through everything. They've been on the Weight Watchers, they've been through Jenny Craig, you know, they've been through, you know, mailing this food to them and that food to them. And you know what I tell people is if they truly want change, I'm the person that they really want to see because I really want to work with them. Not for a one time change, I want to work with them for a true lifestyle change. And that's so cliche. You know, it's a lifestyle change, but it's true. It's a way of living. There's no finish line. This is a way of living every single day. And there's going to be peaks and there's going to be valleys and there's going to be challenges. I have a health coach that I work with as well, a certified health coach. Her job is to create a sustainable lifestyle. My job is to help them understand why. You know, first of all, you have to understand why you need change. People aren't going to change unless they know why they need to change. So biomarkers assist them in understanding why. You know, they say in our industry, 80% of a person's state of health is a result of things that they can actually change. 80%. So if I can get them to change by teaching them why they need to do that, and then I team up with other people that can teach them how to do it, I do the why they do the how. We've got the perfect recipe for them to achieve that optimal state of well being. So if you'd like more information about our practice, go to our website at totalnutritionandtherapeutics. Com. There's great testimonials before and after pictures and tons of information about upcoming seminars.