Yes, during Covid (2020) we transitioned to full-time telemedicine services. All of our sessions are conducted safely on Jane, a HIPAA-compliant platform. We do, however, hope to re-open our on-the-ground clinic in the future, God-willing. Stay tuned for updates. :)
We run discounts every few months around new year, Eids, our clinic anniversary, etc. We are alsoworking to create a system where people can apply for a general discount, but it is not ready just yet. You may, however, go ahead and submit your application here: https://forms.gle/UGL1W3yA4DYpQaRc8
Yes. Payment plans are available upon request.
No. Dr. Mazen is not formally trained as a marriage family therapist (MFT) or a licensed counselor. He is a naturopathic doctor who is also trained in somatic trauma work. Dr. Mazen is highly trained in counseling and trauma work and has spent years counseling hundreds of clients using his Re-membering the Heart approach.
Re-membering the Heart is Dr. Mazen's wholistic relational-oriented somatic-based counseling approach through which patients will explore their own traumatic compensations, suppressed emotions in the body, nafsani belief structures/identifications, maladaptive relational dynamics, and body-mind symptoms to help foster greater integration, clarity, and an embodied sense of self within. The purpose is to heal the underlying inner wounds that are driving our disturbances and distortions at the psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions. What people find when they do this work is an increased sense of clarity, embodied confidence, creativity, and sense of purpose in their lives.
Yes. Dr. Mazen is more than happy to see couples but wants to make sure everyone knows he is not formally trained as a marriage family therapist (MFT). He is a naturopathic doctor who is also trained in somatic trauma work. Dr. Mazen is highly trained in counseling and trauma work and has spent years counseling dozens of couples using his Re-membering the Heart approach.
This is an exclusively naturopathic diagnostic. It is not run by anyone but naturopathic doctors who have learned it from another naturopath who has learned it from the originator, Dr. O.G. Carroll in Washington state. It is a rare test, so very few people are offering it in the first place. A test kit will be sent in the mail with two circular blotter papers inside of 2 small coin envelopes, 2 lancets, an alcohol swab, cotton, a Band-Aid, instructions, and a return envelope. You will need to supply about 10 drops of blood, or about a dime-sized amount on the blotter paper and send it back to Dr. Mazen.
Dr. Mazen will run the sample and he will check for what foods people are intolerant to. This is different than an allergy test or a sensitivity test, which is what people are normally doing. What they really mean is food allergy or food sensitivity, which is checking for what foods people are immune reactive to - so they have antibodies in their immune system that are reacting to peanuts or dairy or gluten - all of that is immune reactivity testing - checking for what your body is reacting to. The food intolerance testing is not checking that. It is checking for what kinds of foods you are intolerant to, meaning you can't digest, you can't metabolize, you can't break down, and you can't assimilate into the body.We test that with a certain type of approach that is unique to the Carroll method. We are checking individual food groups: meat, fruit, potato, dairy, grains, egg, fish, honey, soy, etc. and we are checking combinations: fruit and sugar, dairy and grain, grain and sugar, potato and grain. We are checking what individual food groups people are intolerant to, and also what food groups, when eaten together in combination, prove difficult for the body and show up on the assessment as a food intolerance - to be avoided altogether.Dr. Mazen runs this test for everybody because what we want to do, ultimately, is remove all things that hamper vitality, proper physiological function, and having foods that the body cannot digest is toxic for the body. A toxin, by definition, is anything that the body cannot assimilate or eliminate. So, by removing foods or food combinations that the body is producing toxemia because it cannot digest, we are optimizing digestion, we are optimizing the gut, which we now know is the center of the body and one of the more principial factors in determining good health, good immune function, good hormone function, and good nervous system function, and the gut-brain connection. That is how we determine the individual diet.
Dr. Mazen will often advise people to include certain types of foods in their diet, but he always likes to start with a discussion on what to remove first. Dr. Mazen would rather remove something toxic than to add something beneficial, because the benefit won't really benefit the organism, it won't benefit the body if it is being affected negatively by something toxic. So, the foundation of this medicine is always to remove harm first, and remove what encumbers the body - and then we add the benefit, the khayr, the baraka, and the nutrition. It is the way that Dr. Mazen applies the individual regimen. As a hakim, he has two levels of intervention: one is the himmia, which is the restrictive dietary regimen, and the other is the dawaa, which is the prescriptive element, the homeopathic or the herbs, or even the pharmaceutical - it is all prescriptive medicine, but the himmia is the diet, the lifestyle...and the food intolerance evaluation is how he determines the himmia.
A pediatric intake is a one-hour intake and it consists of the case-taking portion, diagnosis and clinical thoughts, prescription, and then an explanation of the prescription, and how to dose it. Generally, Dr. Mazen prescribes homeopathy and maybe some gentle herbs, but mostly homeopathy.
Your appointment is a medical consultation. Dr. Mazen is going to take the case, and he is going to prescribe. Generally, homeopathy is his mainstay.
Regarding future evaluations, we would check in after about 4 weeks to see how the patient has been doing and adjust the prescriptions from there. Then, based on prior experience, follow up should occur after 6 months, but ultimately it depends on the patient.
Right now the clinic is entirely virtual so there is no real chance to meet in-person for now. In the springtime 2026 or 2027 there is a possibility we might open back up.
No we do not take insurance and that is for multiple reasons. One reason is that insurance companies do not reimburse us as naturopathic practitioners in the state of Illinois. However, the main reason is that we do not want your care to be dictated by the insurance company actuaries. You see, in the conventional system, the doctors are paid ultimately by the insurance companies. And the insurance companies will only pay for visits and treatments that follow their “standards of care”. So if a regular doctor wants to practice medicine and try something new, or something traditional, or something currently unrecognized by the medical establishment they meet with A LOT of resistance. Basically, rocking the boat is not taken lightly. As practitioners outside of the insurance-gripped system, we at FTH remain free to practice our philosophy and therapeutics as we deem fit. This is important for us as practitioners to maintain our independence and integrity, but also for you as patients so that you can receive the best, individualized care possible without cutting corners.
This is a fair question to ask but the answer to that may not be what you expect. As a rule naturopathic doctors do not diagnose or treat, technically, anything because they cannot be licensed as physicians in the state of Illinois. Unfortunately, Illinois does not recognize naturopathic medicine. So we do not, technically in any way, diagnose or treat. This is vital to understand.
What we do is offer holistic natural support.
In naturopathic medicine, we do not prescribe protocols. This is because our approach is holistic and individualized, tailoring our wellness plans for each patient. From our perspective, it is not possible for us to give any recommendations by only knowing a diagnosis. For example, it may be that 10 patients who have been diagnosed with IBS or an anxiety condition walk in my door, but walk out with notably different recommendations and remedies. As naturopathic medicine doctors, we are trained as primary care doctors so we often see a wide array of presentations. Though we do not formally diagnose or treat, our wellness plans are individually crafted with the intention to bring balance and wellness to the totality of the patient. You can read all about the qualifications of our clinicians here.
That’s tough to say without meeting you :)
Look, everyone’s journey is different. Everyone has a unique life to live. And two people with seemingly similar medical diagnoses may have very different healing paths. That’s how holistic individualized medicine works really. We just do what we need to do to create the conditions for health, and we let the body take it from there. God knows best these things and we like to leave it to Him. We can say this though. One of our mentors once said that for most chronic disease cases, it will take the same number of months to heal the case as the number of years the patient was dealing with the disease. So, for example, if a new patient comes to the clinic with a 5-year diagnosis of colitis, it will take about 5 months of consistent and diligent healing work to heal the case. If a patient has dealt with PCOS for 10 years, it can take 10 months to heal, etc. This is not a claim nor a promise to anyone. This is just an insight from one of the greatest naturopathic physicians of the last century, someone who revived and revolutionized this medicine in his time and cured thousands, that I wanted to share with you.
