Cathryn Kaylor Harbor MD

I have always been more interested in health than in disease.  For me, the idea of spending a career trying to manage disease by prescribing medicines seemed unfulfilling if not dangerous.   Sadly, my medical training left me equipped to do little besides prescribe.  Even before finishing my training in Family Practice, I became aware that the system of medicine I had learned did not meet most people's needs.  Most health problems result from complex interactions between inherited health tendencies, environment and diet.  Because of this complexity, there is not a single fix for every problem.  My training left me with few tools when there was not a ready pill for a particular problem.

After several years of frustration with medical practice, I learned about the Institute for Functional Medicine.  The Institute’s continuing education courses provide the best medical teaching I have experienced.  From the Institute for Functional Medicine, I learned a comprehensive approach that works for me and for most of my patients, complementing what I learned in medical school.  I still practice standard medicine and order standard tests:  blood work, colonoscopy, pap smears, xrays and MRIs.  But once the tests are done, the functional medicine approach provides a view that seeks to understand and change underlying imbalances and to restore health.    

Over the ten years since I finished training, I have moved further and further from a pharmaceutical model of health care, and toward a model  that embraces the differences between people and seeks to explore the ways that each person can optimize her or his health.    I love to spend  time with patients, to fully understand their health concerns and to help them think through their options.   While I still prescribe medicines, I try to do so for short periods of time, while other changes are occurring.   My goal is for all of my patients to have excellent health without medicine.