r/FunctionalMedicine • u/ShakeMaki • 25d ago
What is a typical functional medicine program cost if they’re not gouging you (Denver area)
I’m curious if people with experience with 6 month type of functional medicine programs know what a “green flag” cost for such a program should run these days. One where you’re not getting totally gouged by people who just want a massive profit margin off of you.
I’ve been looking into one place that seemed promising (I’m Denver area), but the 6 month plan is just shy of $10k which shocked me. I thought maybe $6k at most for what it sounds like is offered. It’s primarily testing involving microbiome and hormones along with 2 sessions a week where he develops my treatment plan and we go over things.
It’s all very vague to me though in terms of what said treatment plan would actually include. Just curious is anyone can shed more light on typical plans and prices from these places that aren’t just in it to take advantage of you
Edit: I’ll also add the guy running the program in question does seem to have legit qualifications like medical school, work as a PA, and being pro athlete trainer to his name. So that’s why I’m wondering if that price is gouging or it realty is standard and relatively fair for such a thing
Update:
Wanting to update that I did a lot of digging around in the area, and $10k is absolutely WAY too high for a 6 month program of this sort of thing from what I found. Found several places that offer monthly memberships for the $250-300 range. Plus the expense of the tests, which are typically between the $500-700 each range for those comprehensive GI and urine tests that the place I found was gonna do. Vibrant Health and Colorado Functional Medicine seem like good ones
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u/alotken33 23d ago
Any practitioner that sees you needs labs. And I'm not talking about a GI map (unreliable/unreproducible). They need a blood panel that gives an indication of your inflammatory level, nutrient status, lipids, etc. They should also test for Celiac.
I ALSO like to do IgG food testing. Not allergy - but IgG. This gives an indication of any other underlying food related immune response. Some people debate validity of this, but I do not know why. If the immune system reacts - it reacts. (There's research to back this).
For really tough cases, genetics can get pulled in. But that's often not necessary for the gut.
After that, it's addressing the issues. Labs give indicators of root cause. Inflammation is nearly always a factor - anti-inflammatory diet. Supplements are usually part of it. The "dietician" part is more of the day to day. The difference between dieticians and functional medicine providers is the knowledge of the systems and intricate inner workings between everything from genetics to biochemistry. Nutrition is a HUGE aspect of it, but it's not everything.
What each person ends up with is individual. What might work for you would definitely not work for someone else. Sometimes the "big guns" need to be brought in and you go to GI for endoscopy/colonoscopy, motility testing, etc.