Food is more than just energy, it is information.

Functional Medicine is a systems-oriented approach aiming to get to the root cause of health issues. It is a science-based healthcare model that emphasizes the importance of high quality foods and phytonutrient diversity to address clinical imbalances and move patients toward the highest expression of health. Advanced nutrition assessment and a thorough Functional Medicine based history leads to a personalized therapeutic intervention created to promote optimal health and prevent diet- and lifestyle-related disease.

Nutrition is the core modality of Functional Medicine, an integrative approach to health. By shifting the traditional disease-centered focus of health care to a more patient-centered approach, Functional Medicine addresses the whole person, not just an isolated set of symptoms.

Functional Medicine practitioners spend time with their patients, listening to their histories and evaluating the interactions among genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that can influence long-term health and complex, chronic disease.

Functional Nutrition emphasizes healthful eating personalized to your genetics, lifestyle, environment, and health concerns.

Functional Nutrition is about finding the right way for each of us as individuals to eat—using food to maximize the potential for health. There is no single “right diet” that applies to all of us. We have different genetic backgrounds, different preferences, and different lives. We all want to be healthy, but most of us haven’t figured out just how to make food and dietary patterns serve that goal. Functional Nutrition offers the concepts, strategies, and tools to make that happen!

Functional Nutrition developed out of a desire on the part of healthcare providers to change that picture. Emerging science is very clear that food is a powerful influence on health. Food offers not only the calories that fuel our body’s metabolism, but it also contains many diverse components that play important roles in all our bodily functions. Poor-quality food can actually create disease, and high-quality food—in the right proportions and amounts—can reverse disease and sustain health. In a very real sense, food is medicine!

The prevalence of complex, chronic diseases is escalating globally, from heart disease and diabetes to irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, mental illness, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune disorders. Chronic diseases are diet- and lifestyle-related diseases and require dietary and lifestyle solutions. A major strength of Functional Nutrition is its focus on the molecular mechanisms that underlie disease, providing the basis for targeted, innovative solutions that can restore health.

The current healthcare system fails to take into account the unique genetic makeup of each individual or the ability of food, toxins, and other environmental factors to influence gene expression. The interaction between genes and environmental factors is a critical component in the development of chronic disease and plays a central role in the Functional Nutrition approach.

• We are all biochemically individual, based on the concepts of our genetic and environmental uniqueness
• Patient-centred approach, not the disease-centred approach
• The factors that influence our health is a complex web of interconnections, not just a cause and effect approach
• The role of a practitioner is to help the client find dynamic balance between all aspects of their health (body, mind, spirit)
• The health should be viewed as the presence of positive vitality, and not just the absence of disease
• Promotion of organ reserve with nutrition

Milena Kaler is a is a qualified London Nutritionist, autoimmune disease, digestive health, as well as stubborn weight loss (including PCOS, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and hypothyroidism) and sports nutrition specialist. She is trained in the principles of Functional Medicine and practices from her clinic in Central London, Harley Street, as well as providing online consultations.

Milena has helped thousands of people to lose weight and keep it off. Scientific and holistic in approach Milena looks at all aspects of a client’s health. She embraces a systems-oriented approach aiming to get to the root cause of health and weight issues instead of simply focusing on the symptoms.

Milena’s expertise has been sought by celebrities, and she has been featured as a nutrition expert in reputable magazines including Women’s Health, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Women’s Fitness, Peak Brain Training, and Metro.

As a full member of the British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT), and the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC), the only register for Nutritional Therapy recognised by the government and NHS, Milena is committed to upholding their strict Code of Ethics. Additionally, Milena is a member of the Primary Care Society for Gastroenterology (PCSG).

Milena sees patients with chronic health conditions, as well as clients looking for support to optimise their health. Some of the areas Milena can help with include: weight loss, digestive, and hormonal health.

Milena sees every person as an individual with different problems and different goals. She takes time to listen to her clients’ specific concerns to develop customised nutrition and lifestyle plans, based on laboratory test results. Having overcome her own chronic health and weight loss issues, Milena really understands how it is to feel overwhelmed by poor health and can relate to her clients when they first come to see her.