ROOT-CAUSE MEDICINE
Functional Medicine in Mammoth Lakes, CA
Personalized, root-cause care for chronic symptoms, inflammation, hormone imbalance, digestive issues, fatigue, and complex health concerns.
What is Functional Medicine?
Chronic Symptoms Don’t Happen Without a Cause
Most of my patients have already spent time in the conventional medical system, sometimes years, and they have the prescriptions to prove it. Things helped for a while, or they helped partway, and then either stopped working or required even more medications.
What nobody has stopped to ask is why it keeps happening in the first place.
Functional medicine starts with a different premise: the body is an interconnected system, not a collection of separate parts. When something goes wrong, the question isn't just how do we treat the symptom. It's why is the body creating it, and what has disrupted its ability to function normally.
This stands in contrast to conventional medicine, which is extraordinarily effective for acute illness and emergencies, but wasn't designed to unravel the complexity of chronic, multi-system conditions. Treating symptoms in isolation can offer relief, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem.
Functional medicine asks different questions. It looks upstream.
What you put in your mouth, what you're exposed to everyday, how your gut is functioning, where your hormones are at, what your cells are actually able to absorb - these are the foundational pieces that need to be examined closely to understand what is actually going wrong.
The goal is not to manage your symptoms better. It's to understand why they're there in the first place and correct that.
When the root cause is identified and addressed, the body often has a remarkable capacity to restore balance on its own.
Why Functional Medicine?
Because lasting change comes from finding the root cause and following a clear plan.
Medical Training + Functional Medicine
The best of both worlds:
Conventional medical experience and a root-cause framework that looks deeper when symptoms don’t add up.
Whole-Body,
Systems-Based Care
Hormones, gut health, metabolism, toxins, sleep, stress, immune function — it is all connected.
We look at the full picture.
Personalized Care
Your plan is built around your history, your labs when needed, and your goals — with clear steps and structured follow-up.
A Clear Plan.
Built Around Your Body.
Functional medicine is a structured, investigative approach. We look at patterns, identify root drivers, and create a plan that supports your body’s ability to heal.
This may include dietary changes, targeted supplements, lifestyle strategies, and advanced lab testing when appropriate — with follow-up to track progress and adjust as needed.
What Patients Say
I have to tell you I had a moment the other day where I just started crying because I felt SO good, and realized just how bad it really was all those years... It was a profound realization of just how much functional medicine has changed my life.
I knew something was off, but every doctor I saw told me I was 'fine' and just needed more sleep or an antidepressant. I felt so dismissed and started to think it was all in my head. But Jennie investigated the root cause of my symptoms. I’m no longer 'getting by', I’m finally flourishing.
I'm Dr. Jennie Walker
I have been an emergency medicine physician at Mammoth Hospital for over 20 years, and in 2018 I opened a functional medicine clinic here in Mammoth Lakes.The ER keeps me grounded in what conventional medicine does extraordinarily well. The clinic is where I get to ask the questions the ER never has time for.
After 20 years watching patients cycle through the medical system with chronic conditions that never fully resolved, I knew there had to be a better approach. Conventional medicine is extraordinary for acute illness. For chronic, multi-system conditions — the kind that show up as skin flares, gut dysfunction, hormone disruption, and persistent fatigue — it often asks the wrong questions. Functional medicine asks the right ones.
My goal is to help you understand why your symptoms are happening and give you a clear path forward — using evidence-informed care, advanced testing when appropriate, and practical steps you can actually implement.
The Path to Healing
What Happens During Your Consultation
A consultation is a focused, investigative Zoom call where we look beyond your symptoms to understand the narrative of your health. It’s a space to review your history, identify likely root drivers, and decide if our structured functional medicine approach is the right fit for your recovery.
Comprehensive Review
We walk through your health timeline, connecting dots between previous symptoms, current medications, and the supplements you’ve already tried.
Identify Root Patterns
Dr. Walker investigates the intersections of your digestion, hormones, immune function, and stress physiology to find the "why" behind your flares.
Targeted Diagnostics
We discuss whether advanced functional testing—such as GI360 or NutrEval—is necessary to provide the data required for a precision plan.
Clinical Roadmap
You will leave the call with a clear sense of the next best steps and a recommended pathway tailored to your clinical needs and commitment level.
Direct Medical Access
This is an opportunity to ask questions and receive direct guidance from a board-certified physician who understands both worlds of medicine.
Ready for a different conversation?
Take the first step toward understanding the root of your symptoms with a focused initial consultation.
*Consultations are conducted securely via Zoom. Our goal is to ensure you feel seen, heard, and supported with a plan that actually makes sense.
Take the Skin Self-Assessment Survey Here!
Identify patterns behind your skin flare-ups. Complete the survey to understand what your body may be trying to tell you.