Going to the Root Causes of Hiatal Hernia (and Other Health Issues) with Telemedicine – Video

Treating the root causes of hiatal hernia with telemedicine?

For years now, Root Cause Medical Clinic has offered a complete treatment of the root causes of hiatal hernia. Our medical team treats patients from all over the country, both in person and through telemedicine. As a matter of fact, we have developed a program that works predominantly through telemedicine because so many patients suffer from Hiatal Hernia Syndrome, and live far from our clinic in Clearwater, FL.

In this brief video, Dr. Vikki addresses a question asked by many people interested in treating the root causes of hiatal hernia with functional medicine, aka root cause medicine: “I think I have a hiatal hernia, but also some other things going on. Do you also take care of other health issues?”

Transcript of the video

I would like to talk to you today about patients who call our medical clinic, and have a hiatal hernia or suspect they do based on their symptoms… but they are also dealing with other conditions. Because we’ve become the leading experts in treating the root causes of hiatal hernia syndrome, people us inquire if we treat other things as well. We absolutely do.

You can visit our website and see that we address a very wide variety of conditions with root cause medicine, whether in person or remotely. But because we have become quite well known for our expertise in hiatal hernia, some people can think that’s all we do. That’s not the case.

One of the beauties of root cause medicine is that we look at your body as a whole: you can have a hiatal hernia, diabetes, high blood pressure and autoimmune disease, you can have quite a list of things that are troubling you… That doesn’t mean we cannot help.

More importantly, root cause medicine — not just the philosophy, but the way we work with patients — appreciates the fact that all your body parts are interrelated and intermingled. I like to say there is no part of the body that “works in a vacuum”. All parts are affected by other parts.

Going to the root causes of hiatal hernia

Hiatal hernia is interesting as a syndrome because it involves a lot more than just the stomach moving above the diaphragm. It’s not just a stomach problem: it is related to the digestive tract as a whole. It is related to potential infections or toxins. It is related to hormone function because the gut-brain connection is a very tight one. Some people have a predominant symptom like anxiety and insomnia, and other such issues that seem to have nothing to do with the digestive tract.

That is our area of expertise: taking all of your symptoms, all of your conditions, and calling that down to some key root causes. That truly is the beauty of what we do, having the ability after 30 years of expertise of seeing that this one, two, maybe maximum three key issues explain this whole laundry list of conditions and symptoms.

I know that might sound too good to be true, but it’s really not.

Certainly, key symptoms are the digestive tract, but also looking at toxins and infections, looking at hormones, looking at genetics, there’s a lot of things we look at and each of our programs are personalized to you, to your journey. [And we follow you throughout your journey, either in person or by telemedicine].

Root causes: digging deep

As part of our consultation, we go back to your childhood if it’s relevant. We ask questions like, “Did you take a lot of antibiotics?“. “Did you have a lot of stress due to family life?“. “What are your genetics?“.

All of these things come together to form this picture of where we need to address things. As people discuss their health and I’m taking notes, they’ll often say: “Are you running out of paper?” Because they’ve got so many things they’re talking about. For us, it’s like, “No, we want to hear it all“.

Then we start to see the common threads and how it’s all tied together. And it is amazing how simple it can be when you understand the reactions and interrelationships of these various conditions.

So I want you to know this, because it’s a question that’s been coming up more commonly. It goes like this: “Yes, I have a hiatal hernia, but I also have these other conditions and I don’t know what to do about that.” We do literally address it all using root cause medicine.

the one thing we don’t do is we don’t treat active cancer patients.

If somebody has had cancer and they’re endeavoring to make sure they don’t get it again, they want to boost their immune system, etc., that is something we do.

But other than treating active cancer, there’s pretty much nothing we don’t address naturally.

Once the root cause is found, then what?

Now I am always quick to point out we’re not just handing you a pill that you’re swallowing… you’re working for this. And when I say working, I mean there is diet, there are lifestyle changes. But hopefully, that’ll only make sense that the roads you’ve been going down have not worked.

What do we need to do to shift things, to repair the body, to unburden the body?

What I love about our medical team is that we are a team: we’re holding your hand through the transitions because… nobody changes their diet overnight. Nobody changes their lifestyle overnight. It’s something that requires a village of help, and that’s who we are.

If you came to us to find out the root causes of hiatal hernia symptoms you’ve either been diagnosed with or you are suspicious of… yet you also have other health issues including autoimmune diseases… sometimes, people feel that that’s too much, nobody can handle that. I’ve been told “there is no way to address it“, or “something’s heavy in the family“, like “heart disease is really prevalent in my family” or “thyroid disease is really prevalent in my family“, therefore “there’s nothing I can do“.

Again, we don’t find that to be the case. Just because something is genetically prevalent in your family tree doesn’t mean we can’t work a little harder to compensate for that.

So hopefully, this helps explain that question we’ve been hearing a lot lately. It’s fine that you have other conditions and other diseases in addition to a suspected hiatal hernia. Once we go through our analysis, we do an initial consultation [or teleconsultation] where we go over your medical history really deep, in much more depth than any consultation you’ve ever had before, I can almost guarantee it.

And then we explain it, we tie it together, and you really leave that [tele]consultation with an understanding of how it all can be related and what we can do to address it.

Please reach out. We’re more than happy to help. As I said, you will really get an idea of what underlying root causes are [at work]. And I think you’ll be surprised that it’s quite a bit simpler than you anticipate it to be.

As long as you’re open to making some changes (with a lot of handholding), then fine health, great health is really available to you and around the corner and that’s what we’re here for.

Use of telemedicine

Root Cause Medical Clinic has long recognized the need for patients to be able to consult a physician, a nutritionist, even a physical therapist remotely, without necessarily having to travel to a medical office. In our former clinic in Saratoga, we offered telehealth consultations way before the pandemic forced physicians to switch to Zoom and other such platforms.

Our new medical clinic in Clearwater, FL has offered telemedicine services since it started operating, a year or so ago. You can schedule a pre-consultation and regular consultations with a medical professional who will follow you through the program we establish for your recovery.

We have even worked on developing techniques to help you through a Physical Therapy program remotely.

Root Cause Medical Clinic is located in downtown Clearwater, at the corner of S. Ft Harrison and Magnolia. If you live in Pinellas County or Hillsborough County, you can of course consult in person.

Additional references

Read more about the symptoms and root causes of Hiatal Hernia Syndrome in Dr. Vikki Petersen’s book

Telemedicine: Clinical effectiveness – A 2017 research study indicating encouraging success in the treatment of chronic heart failure