What My Diagnosis Taught Me About Primary Care & Functional Medicine

 

This week we continue our dive in to the Vytal Health team, and their personal health stories. This blog was written by care coordinator and operations lead, Loren H.

In my late twenties, I was diagnosed with endometriosis. I had only recently moved to the USA from the UK, and was navigating the insurance-based healthcare system for the first time, dealing with a diagnosis that wasn’t widely understood. What followed was a long lesson in the importance of Primary Care and Functional Medicine. 

The plan presented to me was clear: surgery, possibly leading to a hysterectomy in the future. I was told that to make surgery effective, I would likely need to induce menopause. Hormonal birth control was offered as the alternative, but I’d been there, done that, and felt terrible on it. When I voiced that, there were NO other options to discuss. They scheduled my surgery right there and then, before I left the room. 

I left that appointment feeling like my choices were simple and final: live with it or remove it.

What no one asked about was how I was eating.
No one talked about inflammation.
No one suggested looking at my hormones throughout different phases of my cycle.
No one mentioned checking vitamin levels or micronutrients that could be contributing to how I felt.

It wasn’t negligence. It was structure.

Primary care and specialty medicine are built to diagnose and intervene. They are not built to deeply map hormone patterns across a cycle or investigate subtle nutritional contributors unless there is a clear pathology or insurance-backed indication.

After taking a beat to research on my own, I realized: if I wanted those answers, I would likely have to look outside of insurance.

So I did!

The Labs That Changed Everything

When I began working with a functional medicine provider, the first shift wasn’t a supplement; it was data.

We tested my hormones at multiple points in my cycle.
We evaluated inflammatory markers.
We checked vitamin levels and nutrient status.
We looked for patterns, not just abnormalities.

Some of those labs weren’t things my PCP was willing – or able – to order. They weren’t “standard.” They weren’t always covered. And I understood that.

So I paid out of pocket for them.

Not because insurance was failing me.
Not because traditional medicine was wrong.
But because I was pursuing a different depth of information.

Those labs heavily informed my treatment plan. They helped explain why my symptoms were flaring when they were. They shaped how we approached inflammation. They influenced supplementation and nutrition strategies that became foundational for me.

If I had relied solely on the traditional system, that layer of understanding would have been missing. Those labs also led to inadvertently improving several other areas of my health and well-being simultaneously. 

Functional medicine filled in the rest of the puzzle and gave me more options. 

Choosing Surgery, With Clarity

Over several years, my symptoms improved. I learned my triggers and understood my cycle. I felt grounded in my body in a way I never had before. I had two healthy children, despite being told by my OBGYN that my fertility was far from optimal, and natural conception may not be an option for me.

And then, several years later, I chose surgery to remove the endometriosis.

This time, the decision felt different.

I wasn’t reacting or being pressured in to a surgical solution, I was choosing.

I used insurance. I worked with a surgical team inside the traditional system and I felt relieved, confident that I was intervening at the right time, not out of fear but out of clarity.

Once I had the surgery, my functional medicine provider was an integral part of the healing and recovery process.

Together we targeted supplements, herbs, inflammation management, recurrence prevention. I truly believe the years of groundwork I had done changed both how I entered surgery and how I recovered from it. I believe it delayed recurrence and gave me resilience I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Functional medicine didn’t replace traditional medicine for me.
It strengthened it.

Understanding the Difference

Here’s what that experience taught me:

Insurance-based primary care and specialty medicine are excellent at what they’re designed to do: acute care, procedures, screening, and system navigation.

Functional medicine is built for something different: personalization, prevention, pattern recognition, and long-term data analysis.

They are not competitors.
They are complements.

When I needed surgery, I was grateful for a system that could perform it skillfully and safely.
When I needed hormone mapping across my cycle and deeper nutrient analysis, I understood that I would likely need to pursue that outside of insurance.

Both were appropriate. Both were valuable.

But they required different structures.

Why This Matters at Vytal

At Vytal, we practice the model that quite honestly changed my life.

We are intentionally small.
We look for patterns.
We track labs over time.
We evaluate trends, not just single data points.

That level of depth depends on thoughtful coordination.

In functional medicine, labs aren’t just ordered and filed away. They are compared year over year. They are layered with symptom patterns. They are used to guide prevention and long-term strategy.

That requires consistency and structure.

It also means acknowledging something honestly: not every lab fits neatly inside an insurance framework, and not every system is built for this kind of analysis.

Just as I once chose to pay out of pocket for specialized labs because I knew they were critical to my care, sometimes protecting depth means operating a little differently than large systems do.

Not because one is better than the other, but because they serve different purposes.

The Bigger Lesson

If my journey taught me anything, it’s this:

Healthcare isn’t either/or.

Sometimes you need surgery.
Sometimes you need antibiotics.
Sometimes you need advanced lab work that insurance won’t prioritize.

The wisdom is in knowing when to use each and why.

Functional medicine gave me agency.
Traditional medicine gave me intervention.

Together, they gave me healing.

That’s why I believe so deeply in this work, not just professionally, but personally.

— Loren – Care Coordinator