Frequently Asked Questions of Functional Medicine

This page summarizes the questions we most often receive before a first consultation. If you already have an appointment scheduled, we also recommend reading the Welcome Guide, which thoroughly prepares you for your first session and explains our clinical process step by step.

If after reading you still have questions, write to us via WhatsApp at +52 55 8567 1110.
We're here to support you.

Applied Functional Medicine

HOW WE WORK

Functional Medicine is a personalized, patient-centered, evidence-based model whose goal is to identify the root causes of health imbalances — not simply treat symptoms. It studies each person's unique genetics, biochemistry, environment, and lifestyle to design a plan that restores function and builds long-term optimal health.
In our practice, we honor this model in three concrete ways:
• Real clinical time. Each initial consultation lasts 90 to 105 minutes. We don't do this as a luxury — it's what it takes to build a physiological map that helps us understand your health from the root.
• Multidisciplinary integration. We work as a team with functional nutrition, clinical nursing, and, when needed, other specialists. No complex case is solved alone.
• Strategy, not quick prescriptions. After your consultation, we dedicate a clinical integration phase to analyze findings, prioritize interventions, and build your plan with precision before sending it to you.
The path to creating health is different from the one that generates disease. That's why we practice with method, depth, and ongoing support.
More information about the standard Functional Medicine model at www.ifm.org
For a clinical decision that will influence your health, you deserve to know who you're working with.
Dr. Luis Daniel Vilchis Hernández (Dr. Luigi Vilchis):
• Medical Doctor — Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC). Active professional medical license.
• Certified by the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFMCP) — complete training in the six advanced modules: Cardiometabolic, Immune, Hormone, Bioenergetics, Gastrointestinal, and Environmental Health, plus the clinical application program (AFMCP).
• Diploma from the International Board of Lifestyle Medicine (DipIBLM) — international certification in Lifestyle Medicine.
• Certified in Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (ABHRT) — advanced training in bioidentical hormones.
Founding member and Latin America representative of the International Board of Functional Medicine Certification (IBFMC) — the only international board for certification in Functional Medicine.
The short answer: if you've never seen one and you're interested in optimizing your health, it's worth it.
Our specialty is complex cases — patients who have visited multiple specialists without clear answers, who have spent years accumulating partial diagnoses, or whose response to conventional treatments has plateaued. But we also support those who:
• Seek to optimize their quality of life and promote healthy longevity.
• Feel their energy, mental clarity, or vitality has declined without clear explanation.
• Want a comprehensive, in-depth assessment of their health.
• Have significant family history and want to actively prevent disease.
• Want to learn how to make daily decisions that benefit not only their own health, but also that of their family and surroundings.
There are moments when the best recommendation is not to schedule with us — yet. In the case of a medical emergency (heart attack, trauma, fracture, severe dehydration, anaphylactic shock, hemorrhage, active COVID, or any other emergency), go immediately to your primary care physician, the appropriate specialist, or a hospital.
Once the emergency is resolved, we can support you in optimizing recovery, restoring function, and preventing recurrences. That's our terrain.
Being clear about our limits is part of how we respect your health.
No. It is evidence-based medicine.
It integrates the knowledge of allopathic (conventional) medicine with advances in epigenetics, nutrigenomics, biochemistry, psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology, pharmacology, nutraceuticals, phytomedicine, and systems thinking. It does not replace conventional medicine: it complements it, expands prescribing beyond medication, and prioritizes the root cause over symptom management.
When a pharmacological medication is necessary, we prescribe it. When a lifestyle intervention can resolve the origin, we prioritize it. The difference lies in the approach and the strategy.
This consultation is for you if:
• You seek to understand the origin of what's happening to you, not just silence it.
• You are willing to invest time in questionnaires, lab work, and lifestyle changes.
• You value a deep clinical process more than an immediate solution.
• You want to work as a team with your physician, not receive passive instructions.
It is not for you if:
• You're looking for a quick prescription without engaging in the process.
• You need urgent care or a specialist for an acute condition.
• You expect results without commitment to sustained changes.
Filtering well at the start allows us to support you better afterward.

THE CLINICAL PROCESS

Before, during and after

You can schedule directly through our platform:
https://drluigivilchis.as.me/
To confirm your appointment, a 50% deposit is required (or 100% for telemedicine consultations). Without confirmed payment, the slot remains available for other patients.
You can also contact us directly:
• WhatsApp: +52 55 8567 1110
• Phone: +52 55 6269 6664 / 6665
Your initial consultation lasts 90 to 105 minutes. We recommend you set aside 2 hours in your schedule to arrive and leave calmly.
Before seeing you, our team organizes your record and reviews your questionnaires and prior studies when available. We come prepared.
During the session we conduct:
• Medical evaluation in Functional Medicine.
• Lifestyle assessment as a therapeutic pillar.
• Functional nutritional consultation and initial eating plan.
• Body composition measurement (InBody) for in-person consultations.
• Initial design of your diagnostic plan and personalized therapeutic strategy.
Our goal is not just to give you a prescription. It is to build with you a clear and deep clinical map of your current physiology, on which the rest of the process is refined.
Follow-up consultations last approximately 50 to 60 minutes.
It's not required. Every case is individual, and during your initial session we define together which studies will add real value to your process, based on your clinical history, findings, and goals.
That said, some patients prefer to come prepared — out of curiosity, out of habit with preventive check-ups, or because they want to arrive with recent data to go deeper, faster, in the analysis. If that's your case, once your appointment is scheduled you'll receive in your Welcome Guide an optional list of recommended labs and the partner labs we work with.
Advanced functional panels (high-resolution cardiometabolic, complete hormonal profile, gut microbiome, functional genetics, among others) are not ordered by default. They are indicated when the clinical case warrants it.
"Normal" doesn't mean optimal. We look for patterns, optimal ranges, and early markers of dysfunction that guide prevention, improve your function, and enhance your quality of life.
Your initial consultation generates a lot of information. Don't worry about remembering everything.
Within the first 24 to 72 hours afterward:
• You'll receive initial recommendations so you can start acting from day one.
• You'll receive instructions for your lab work, along with any complementary referrals.
• Your clinical team will structure your personalized plan — therapeutic strategy, supplementation, eating plan, and Lifestyle Medicine tools — and you'll receive it by email.
If an urgent question arises between consultations, you can write to us via WhatsApp. Clinical communication between consultations is reserved for specific topics and initial guidance; fine therapeutic decisions are built in consultation to guarantee the quality of every decision.
What defines a good Functional Medicine process is not the initial consultation, but the rigor with which your story and your struggles are heard, the findings are analyzed, and the strategy is structured.
The second consultation is generally scheduled between 4 and 8 weeks after the initial one. In it, we analyze your progress, interpret your studies in detail, and based on this we fine-tune your plan with greater precision.
After the second consultation, follow-ups are scheduled every 4 to 12 weeks depending on your clinical and personal needs. The cadence is fine-tuned with you, with the goal of ensuring optimal, sustainable, and measurable results in the medium and long term.
Yes. We offer telemedicine consultations via Zoom (or your preferred platform). The clinical process is the same: questionnaires, in-depth review, personalized plan, and integration with studies.
An important note on transparency: our medical license is valid in Mexico. For patients outside the country, we work in the form of recommendations, and in some cases we may request complementary evaluation by a physician in your area. This protects your health and respects the regulatory frameworks of each region.
We also want to be clear about the practical limitations: every country has its own healthcare system, pharmaceutical regulations, and availability of studies. We're not familiar with all the particularities of yours. We'll do our best, but it's likely you'll need to invest additional time in locating laboratories that offer the panels we request, arranging imaging studies that in Mexico can be obtained directly and in other countries require a physician referral, and verifying that the supplements and nutraceuticals we recommend meet the same quality and third-party testing standards as those we work with here.
To schedule a telemedicine consultation, book directly through our platform: https://drluigivilchis.as.me
or write to us via WhatsApp at +52 55 8567 1110.
Coming soon: The Healthspan Program.
We're developing a structured 3- to 6-month program that integrates consultations, functional lab work, complementary therapies, nutrition, strategic supplementation, and clinical team support — designed for patients seeking sustained transformation, not just isolated interventions.
If you'd like to be among the first to learn about it when we launch, let us know by email at info@drluigivilchis.com. In the meantime, the most solid path is still to begin with a Functional Medicine consultation and build your process from there.

Other therapies and services

These therapies are indicated when the clinical case warrants it, not by default. Their use is discussed and prioritized within your Functional Medicine process, not as standalone services.

BHRT uses hormones with the same molecular structure as those the human body produces (unlike synthetic hormones). It is prescribed in individualized doses based on lab work, clinical profile, and each patient's goals, under close medical supervision.
It is a valuable tool for perimenopause, menopause, andropause, and other clinically documented hormonal imbalances. It's not for every case: it requires prior evaluation, clear indication, and ongoing support.
More information in the services section of the site.
IV Therapy sessions allow nutrients (such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants) to be administered directly into the bloodstream, reaching plasma levels that the oral route cannot achieve. Useful in specific situations: accelerating recovery processes, post-event recovery, documented deficiencies, immune support or prevention, performance optimization, or as an adjuvant in supervised detoxification processes.
Each protocol is chosen according to your clinical case. We don't use generic "one-size-fits-all" formulas.
HBOT involves breathing 100% oxygen inside a pressurized chamber. This significantly increases the amount of oxygen dissolved in plasma and tissues, supporting processes of cellular repair, inflammation modulation, neuroplasticity, and recovery.
It has well-documented applications in neurological recovery, longevity medicine, complex wound healing, pre-surgical preparation and post-surgical recovery, chronic fatigue, certain cases of Long COVID, vascular diseases, and others. It is indicated case by case, with the number and frequency of sessions defined according to clinical goal.

Investment, logistics, and policies

A fair and necessary question, but before talking about figures, it's worth broadening the view.
What you're considering is not the cost of a consultation. It's an investment in prevention, in arriving early, in building healthy years instead of years of disease management. When done well and on time, a Functional Medicine process can spare you the wear and tear — emotional, physical, and financial — of bouncing between specialists without clear answers, of accumulating medications to silence symptoms whose cause is never addressed, and of arriving at middle age with the cascade of chronic conditions that today are the norm: metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementias, autoimmunity, frailty.
The numbers matter in the other direction too. Hospitalizations, surgeries, and long-term care in the last years of life represent, for most people, the highest healthcare expense of their entire existence. And many of those events are potentially preventable through early interventions in lifestyle, metabolic function, and immune resilience. This is what we call healthspan: not just living more years, but living more years with autonomy, mental clarity, energy, and without dependence.
Seen this way, the mental frame is not "how much does this consultation cost" but "what am I buying, and what am I avoiding, by investing in this process now".
The practical detail.
The initial consultation has a fixed cost, visible when scheduling through our platform https://drluigivilchis.as.me/. Everything else varies: lab work, nutraceuticals, follow-up consultations, and complementary therapies are built from your findings and goals, not from a predefined package.
As a general framework for the first 3 to 6 months of a typical process, there are four categories of investment:
• Consultations: the initial one plus 2 to 3 follow-ups during the first six months.
• Initial functional lab work: broad range depending on the panel — from basic analyses to advanced microbiome, hormonal, or high-resolution cardiometabolic panels.
• Nutraceuticals and therapeutic supplements: adjusted as your process progresses. They tend to be higher in the active phase and decrease in the maintenance phase.
• Complementary therapies (optional, as indicated): IV, HBOT, BHRT — quoted separately when they apply.
After your first consultation, once your plan is defined, we can give you a more precise estimate via WhatsApp if it helps you plan.
Functional Medicine is an investment in medium- and long-term health. We want it to be sustainable for you, and that's why we prioritize in every decision.
We do not currently work directly with medical insurance. Some insurance plans do accept our services for reimbursement, others do not — it depends on the plan and the insurer.
Centro de Nutrición y Medicina Funcional
Lamartine 139, Polanco V Sección, Miguel Hidalgo, 11550 Mexico City, Mexico.
Hours:
• Monday to Friday: 8:00 am – 8:00 pm
• Saturday: 9:00 am – 2:00 pm
Contact:
• Phone: +52 55 6269 6664 and 6665
• WhatsApp: +52 55 8567 1110
• General email: info@drluigivilchis.com
• Lab results submission: data@drluigivilchis.com
We have valet parking, although it can fill up during peak hours — allow margin for traffic and parking.
We accept the following forms of payment:
• In-person payment at the clinic: cash (Mexican pesos) or credit/debit card.
• Mexican domestic wire transfer (SPEI) — accounts in Mexico, BBVA.
• Bank deposit — accounts in Mexico, BBVA.
• Online card payment via Stripe — available when scheduling directly through our platform, or we can generate a secure payment link for you. Accepts international cards in multiple currencies, which makes it the most practical option for patients outside Mexico. Request it via WhatsApp.
• USD payment for international patients: we have a U.S. bank account that receives payments via Zelle or bank deposit, in addition to the Stripe option.
About tax invoices (Mexican CFDI):
Yes, we issue tax invoices. If you need one to deduct your consultations, send your tax information to finance@drluigivilchis.com within the same month the service was provided.
Booking and confirmation.
To confirm your consultation, a 50% deposit is required (or 100% for telemedicine consultations). Without confirmed payment, the slot remains available for other patients.
Cancellation and rescheduling.
We know unexpected things come up. Out of respect for the clinical time reserved for you, we ask that you notify us at least 24 hours in advance if you need to reschedule — that way we honor your deposit. Cancellations with less than 24 hours' notice, or not showing up to a confirmed consultation, are non-refundable.
Bilateral responsibility commitment.
As a clinical team with academic commitments and international conferences, we may occasionally need to reschedule a consultation. Our commitment to you:
• Communicate changes with as much advance notice as possible, ideally weeks ahead.
• If we need to reschedule with less than 5 days' notice on our end, your next consultation will have a 50% discount as acknowledgment of the impact on your schedule.
Respect for time is mutual. Your schedule matters as much as ours.

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Still have questions? Write to us or text us at +52 664 587 7161 to schedule a free pre-assessment call.

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