New Wellness Center for Women Focuses on Holistic Approach to Health Care

Laura Ruby wants to use her 25 years of health care experience to help local women see medicine and health care in a new light. She recently opened the Optimal Wellness Center in Westminster.

Ruby, a nurse practitioner with a clinical doctorate, has accumulated a unique combination of health care experience in both traditional medicine as well as functional medicine. For the past 12 years she has specialized in the field of endocrinology. 

"Our vision is to offer a comprehensive holistic approach to help women achieve optimal health and wellness with the focus on treating the woman, not the disease," Ruby told Patch.

Ruby said her practice is based on the following principles:

• Women are unique
• Use of a 'peeling the onion' approach to managing women’s chronic symptoms by peeling away one layer at a time to get to the core of the problem.
• There is no “magic pill” or “quick fix”. Most chronic illness is food-borne, thus comprehensive lifestyle changes are essential to achieve optimal wellness.
• Use of social groups and networking as a tool to support women in make the necessary lifestyle changes needed to manage and reverse chronic symptoms/illness.

"Our traditional health care system is so focused on 'treating with medications' that we underestimate our power to reduce and even reverse the consequences of chronic disease with aggressive lifestyle changes," Ruby said.

For example, she said, many people are sensitive to inflammatory foods such as gluten and removing certain foods from the diet can have amazing results.  

"I have seen women with autoimmune disease such as rheumatoid arthritis have reduced pain and decrease their need for medications, women with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes normalizing their blood sugar and coming off of their medications and women who have failed with traditional weight loss programs finally achieve a healthy weight," Ruby said.

Want to learn more about Optimal Wellness and Dr. Laura Ruby? There is an open house at Optimal Wellness on Friday, June 14 from 2 to 7 p.m. There will be mini-lectures, raffles, a riboon cutting and other activities. 

Visit www.optimalwellnessforwomen.com or call 410-861-5256 for more information.