Combining the Best of All Worlds

Dr. Inna Lukyanovsky is a functional medicine practitioner, gut and hormones expert, doctor of pharmacy and author of Crohn’s and Colitis Fix. She exhorts, “I help you restore gut and hormone health to finally have a lot of energy and fun in life.”

         “My ideal client is someone with a chronic condition like Crohn’s, colitis or chronic hormone imbalance that’s really fed up, that is ready for a change and ready to put in the work, because I believe in no magic pill—I have tremendous effect on the results of my clients who are ready,” says Lukyanovsky. “If you’re going in for healing to just hand me something and hoping to be fine, it’s not that type of program. You going to work with nutritional changes possibly through your lifetime. Functional diagnostics open up a whole different world, but you do have to be open for that type of healing, and you have to be ready with your mindset and fed up with what’s happening with your body.”

         A new client’s first visit comprises an initial consultation. “We spend a long time discussing the biggest problems, and I usually try to explain to my clients that the biggest question is, ‘What is your major complaint?’ A lot of people tell me their diagnoses, and I explain that it’s not what really bothering you. If it’s a stomach ache, diarrhea is the most bothersome, so when we look back at our accomplishments, if you went in with diarrhea 10 times a day, and you now at one or two a day, that’s huge. So, it’s not the diagnosis, it’s really the complaint. After the initial consultation, I’m able to figure out what kind of functional diagnostics I would recommend, which is really important, because it will design the entire plan for work and what kind of supplements they need.”

         Lukyanovsky explains that her first interest in medicine ccame naturally to her when her grandma was sick. “I lived in the Ukraine, and I would spend a lot of time with her; she would take a lot of trips to the pharmacy. All I wanted was for her to feel better, and I thought that, you know, I’ll grow up and make a magic pill. The whole atmosphere in the European pharmacies is not the same like here. It’s very boutique-like; the essential oil smell, all these ladies that give out medications to my grandma that will help her. When I got here [in the U.S.] at 15, I went to high school and then pharmacy school. Medical school was something I maybe thought about for a moment—my mom said it was too long, and you’re not going to get a family. But pharmacy school was five years at the time, so it fit in perfectly.” She attended the Long Island University Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy for a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy, and completed a doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Florida, graduating cum laude.

         Her mentors include Dr. Daniel Kalish, founder of the Kalish Institute for Functional Medicine, in California. “I adore him, I like worship him, he trained me,” she says. Another is Sara Gottfried, M.D., a popular author of many hormone books. “She is amazing, very bright, I follow her, and every word she says resonates with me,” says Lukyanovsky. She started her company in 2010 online and moved to New Jersey in 2011.

         “I believe in traditional ways, and medicine is evolving, except we don’t really address inflammation and chronic conditions well,” advises Lukyanovsky. “That’s where functional medicine does well at the preventative level, and also covering inflammatory root causes. The biggest difference is the fact that we want to find the root cause. That’s the 10-week plan that I usually recommend after the initial consult. It’s called Digestive Reset. During that time, we get the results of the functional diagnostics, and every two weeks we discuss a different topic on how to decrease inflammation, along with coaching and consulting; it’s very intense. If my client needs me for longer, I offer up to a 12-month program, but a lot of them are really doing well after 10 weeks, and I will also map out a plan for a year after if they are ready—then they can go and be on their own.”

             Not every new discipline is ready for prime time, she explains. “I feel that certain genetic testing is important because some steps can be taken to address or prevent major chronic issues. But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves with genetic testing on certain things.”

             Lukyanovsky confides, “I wanted to write a book for a decade since I got sick, because at the end of the day, it’s about reaching more people to make them realize there’s more that can be done—that’s the only way to do that—to offer that book for free, so we could reach a larger group of people.”

For more information, call 732-414-6223. For her free book and free monthly webinars, visit DigestiveReset.com.