Reflections on Moving to Our New Office & Projections for Our Future

By Jannet Huang, MD, FRCPC, FACE, ABHM

A lot of patients have been asking me why we moved. I will take this opportunity to share some reflections and plans with you.

I will start with a cliché — time flies! It is hard to believe that it has been more than five years since I established The Center for Optimal Health. My lease was running out at Quail Hill Village Center. The forces of the universe, acting through a wonderful broker, brought us to our current location — 3500 Barranca Parkway. Although we will miss the open-air courtyard and the “unconventional” setting (we were not in a medical building), the move brought tremendous prospects for our future. Many of you asked me if I was stressed with the move — honestly I was not. I had my trusted office manager Judy Klinger orchestrating the logistics of the move (for which I owe her my heartfelt appreciation). I was actually immensely excited to have the opportunity to redesign the office to serve all of you better.

We have kept the calming green color scheme for our new office to create a healing, harmonious environment. A serene water feature welcomes you as you enter our Center. Water represents life and energy. You will see many paintings and plants in the water theme enriching our office. Our new office has also become my daughter Lara’s gallery! I proudly display Lara’s artwork — including paintings and ceramics throughout the Center. You will see that she is quite a prolific young artist (she just turned 8 in July 2009).

I am very excited to present several new developments at our Center. We have created a “Zen room” where Neemu Murthy, AHE (Ayurveda Health Educator) will share the wisdom of ayurveda lifestyle — including meditation, nutrition, oiling and aromatherapy. We will also be offering cooking classes. Having personally adopted some aspects of the ayurveda lifestyle and finding it enjoyable and enriching for my own health, I cannot wait for more of you to come discover these ancient, yet scientifically validated, knowledge. (Ayurveda means the knowledge or science of life.) At this time, I am in the process of attending a training course in Maharishi Ayurveda for physicians. My goal is to integrate wisdoms from different healing systems together with my Western allopathic training to optimize each individual patient’s health.

Another exciting addition to our offerings will be IV (intravenous infusions) therapy. Starting in late January 2010, we will begin IV services with infusions to help boost immunity, energy and to supplement targeted nutrients. Specialty infusions such as alpha-lipoic acid for diabetic neuropathy and glutathione for counteracting free radicals/oxidative damage will also be available. We have decided to add intravenous therapy as it will be an invaluable resource for our patients who have digestive and /or absorptive issues that make it difficult for them to replenish certain nutrients via oral supplementation.

We are also introducing the “Identi-T-Stress” program which will help us assess our patients’ stress phenotype (how their body and mind respond to stress) so we can help design a more personalized approach of diet, herbal/vitamin supplements and stress reduction techniques to improve resilience to stress and thereby improve health in today’s stress-laden society.

We will also be offering reflexology as well as meditation classes to enhance mind-body wellbeing.

To stay at the cutting edge of cardiovascular risk reduction, we are also evaluating the feasibility of adding a sophisticated noninvasive tool to evaluate arterial plaque burden. It is a specialized ultrasound technique to measure the CIMT (Carotid Intimal-Medial Thickness) — the thickness of the lining of the carotid arteries, which has been validated in numerous research studies to be a reliable surrogate marker of coronary artery atherosclerosis (plaque).

If you are interested in any of the above new services or have suggestions for us, please fax us at 949-872-2855, or email us at info@thecenterforoptimalhealth.org. Thank you for your time and helping us serve you better.

~November 2009