Figs Protocol
A nourishing approach to trauma and mental health.
How long has it been since you’ve felt safe? Quite a while, I’m guessing. Maybe never? It’s time to work on that.
When we work together, I’ll use a FIGS Protocol to help assess your particular needs. Then, we’ll collaboratively choose food, supplement, and lifestyle interventions that are unique to you and your lifestyle. Learn more about the FIGS Protocol below.
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In this part of the FIGS protocol, we will assess your intake of nutrients that help your body feel safe. We'll use tools such as the Genova NutrEval and a detailed diet assessment to dig deep into your current nutrition and discover whether you're eating enough of the types of foods that help you feel good.
This is no judgment space –you'd be amazed at how often people eat well, but their body's physiology makes absorption challenging.
We offer expanded nutrigenomics testing to explore your unique genetic and nutritional needs.
Investment for the FIGS Protocol
Please schedule a call below to learn more about pricing.
What’s included?
✓ Nutrient testing
✓ Diet assessment
✓ Drug/nutrient assessment
✓ Food, supplement & lifestyle recommendations
✓ Lifestyle recommendations
Additional Fee
$ Nutrigenomics testing
$ Supplements
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This part of the FIGS protocol seeks to understand your sources of inflammation, starting with stress and trauma. The body perceives stress and trauma as inflammation. We’ll seek to understand whether you feel emotionally supported in your life, whether you experience microaggressions and marginalization, and whether the environment you live in contributes to inflammation. Finally, we’ll look at the foods you eat to determine whether these contribute to an inflammatory load in your body.
Again, this isn’t a judgment space–it’s shocking how much the social determinants of health–trauma, environment, economic means, racism, and marginalization–can contribute to inflammation. These are factors that you have little control over.
The good news? Even if you’re working for a toxic boss, navigating a divorce, or dealing with a loved one’s serious disease, we can use food and supplements to help your body feel less wear and tear. In turn, you'll feel more emotionally able to cope with the circumstances around you.
Investment
Please schedule a call below to learn more about pricing.
What’s included?
✓ Adverse childhood experiences (aces) assessment
✓ Social determinants of health assessment
✓ Detailed medical history & medical nutrition therapy recommendations
✓ Food and supplement recommendations
Additional Fee
$ Supplements
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If you asked me to choose a single “canary in the coal mine” for mental health symptoms, I’m pretty sure it would be the gut. Frequently, when we experience trauma, anxiety, or depression, we feel it in the gut.
The gut-brain axis ensures that communication flows freely between the gut and the brain. This is the connection we will intentionally work on in the FIGS protocol so that rather than sending signals of danger, your gut will send signals of safety to your brain.
This is a “bottom-up” approach of using interventions in the gut to communicate safety to the brain, one that works with your body’s physiology to communicate in ways that are natural to the body.
Investment
Please schedule a call below to learn more about pricing.
What’s included?
✓ Detailed GI medical and symptom history
✓ Genova GI effects test (comprehensive stool panel)
✓ Food recommendations
✓ Supplement recommendations
✓ Access to safe and sound protocol (SSP)
Additional Fee
$ Add-ons to basic stool panel
$ Safe and sound protocol coaching
$ Heartmath coaching
$ Supplements
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Did you tear up the last time someone asked you if you were okay? Stress can do that.
It can also significantly impact your physical and mental health via the wear and tear that comes with stress hormones that are out of whack.
While I can’t do anything about that toxic boss or other stressors in your life (that’s something for you to explore with a trusted friend or therapist), I can use nutrition and supplements to help you feel less of that stress in your body.
And when you don’t feel the stress as much, your mental and physical health improves significantly.
Investment for the FIGS Protocol
Please schedule a call below to learn more about pricing.
What’s included?
✓ Stress hormone testing
✓ Holmes - Rahe assessment
✓ Crum’s stress mindset
✓ Cohen’s perceived stress measure
✓ Food, supplement, & lifestyle recommendations
Additional Fee
$ Reproductive hormone testing
$ Thyroid nutrient testing
$ Biofeedback tools
$ Supplements
“I can't even stress how much better I feel. My anxiety has lifted and I can actually go to the grocery store and doctor's office without a panic attack.”
Jamie M.
The Process
01 / Meet
When we first meet, I’ll spend an hour seeking to understand your story. I’ll ask questions about your medical history, how you live currently, and how you want to live in the future.
You may be surprised to learn I don’t normally make recommendations at the first appointment. That’s because it takes me the whole hour to start to get to know you, and I don’t want to offer any suggestions until I know you better.
02 / Plan
Between the initial appointment and the first follow up, I’ll work up a menu of options for you, including testing, lifestyle, and supplementation recommendations. This still isn’t a prescriptive recommendation list. I need your help to determine how to approach each objective.
You know your body best and will know better than I whether a food, supplementation, biofeedback, or other approach is going to work for you. By the end of the first follow up, we’ll come up with a list of experiments to run to find out what works for you.
03 / Experiment
After our first follow up appointment, we’ll have a basic intervention plan. The Nutrition Hive concierge will reach out, and help you implement testing and supplements that may be needed.
We’ll continue to work together weekly for at least three months to work through the list of experiments we made in the first follow up appointment. These experiments will help us understand how to customize the FIGS approach to your own unique needs.
FAQ
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Many biological factors can influence mental health. Things like thyroid dysfunction, reproductive hormone challenges, and even blood sugar regulation play a huge role. And we haven’t even begun to mention the viral challenges to mental health, like long COVID, lyme, and EBV.
The FIGS protocol starts by assessing the most common factors I’ve seen contribute to mental health symptoms in my practice. But rest assured, if the root cause of your symptoms isn’t one of the FIGS factors, we will absolutely look to treat that as well.
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Yes, but using nutrition benefits for insurance doesn’t cover a lot of the integrative and functional approaches that are involved in the FIGS protocol. Please schedule a call with a client concierge to talk through the specifics of your case.
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This approach is not very effective. Most people have a multifactorial etiology, meaning that there is more than one thing that is contributing to symptoms. That’s why I’ve packaged the FIGS protocol all together to help us assess multiple factors that may be contributing to your symptoms.
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Depending on my schedule, I’d be delighted to see you. I have very specific availability due to my family’s needs, and my teaching responsibilities. Because of that, I’ve trained the entire Nutrition Hive team to implement FIGS protocols, and I work in collaboration with them on a daily basis. If our schedules don’t match, you’ll be well taken care of by my team.
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Because everyone is unique. Honestly, I’ve seen what happens when practitioners create generic anxiety protocols, and the result is low symptom relief. I don’t include supplements within the package because each supplemental approach is customized to you and your lab results.
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Yes! Customized nutrition care means being in communication with your other providers. I’ll make an effort to let them know what we’re working on with your permission.
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There’s a difference between nutrition for mental health (generally seen as an anti-inflammatory approach), and trauma-informed nutrition. Many providers use mental health nutrition tools, but execute them in a way that does harm. Trauma-informed nutrition providers often don’t have the functional nutrition training to get to the root cause. My approach combines both mental health nutrition and a trauma-informed, no-harm approach to execution.