Integrative medicine in Seville

Integrative is not alternative, and that needs saying plainly

It's the question almost everyone arrives with, from both directions: some worry they'll be given something with no scientific basis, others are hoping for exactly that. Both deserve a straight answer.

The starting point is conventional medicine: history, examination, blood work, imaging where it's warranted, and referral to a specialist when that's what's needed. What gets added isn't another belief system. It's the weight given to factors that shape how an illness behaves and that rarely fit into a short appointment.

If you're looking for a device that diagnoses without blood work, or a treatment that promises to fix everything at once and without testing, this isn't the place. That's not a judgement — we just don't do it.

What happens at the first appointment

The first visit is long, and it's the part that can't be shortened without emptying out everything after it. Most of it is spent listening and putting things in order: when it started, what makes it worse, what has already been tried and what came of it.

Then we look at what you already have. Bring blood work from the past few years even if you were told it was fine, reports from other specialists, and your medication and supplements with doses. A good part of the work is reading together what has so far been read separately.

• A full history: digestion, sleep, cycle, energy across the day, pain, mood.
• Physical examination and a review of the results you bring with you.
• Blood work aimed at what's suspected, not a standard panel for everyone.
• A written plan, saying what changes first and in what order.
• A review date, to check whether what we set up is actually working.

Five professionals, one plan

In most places, «multidisciplinary team» means you can book with several professionals in the same building. Each one sees you, each one gives you their instructions, and fitting them together quietly becomes your job.

Here the medical consultation is the starting point and there is one plan. If your case needs nutrition, psychology, physiotherapy or training, those people come in with the same diagnosis in front of them and the same goal. They talk to each other without you carrying messages, and when something changes, it changes for everyone.

That isn't an organisational nicety. It's what stops the eating plan pulling against the training, or the stress work running on one track while the rest of the plan runs on another.

How people actually arrive

Nobody types «I'd like an integrative approach». People come with something specific, and it's usually through one of four doors.

None of these gets clearer by being given a label. The question is what's keeping it going, and answering that means looking in more than one place at once.

• Digestive: bloating, unpredictable bowel habits, symptoms that come and go with no clear pattern. This is where gut microbiome and SIBO come in — and where the commercial noise is loudest.
• Food intolerances and reactions, often after a list of banned foods that nobody has revisited since.
• Fatigue: tiredness that sleep doesn't fix, with normal blood work and an explanation that never arrives.
• Hormonal health: perimenopause and menopause, changing cycles, broken sleep, loss of strength; and in men, energy and urological health.

What to expect, and what not to

Expect an explanation you can actually follow, a plan with an order to it, and a review with a date on it. Expect to be told no when something isn't indicated, and to be referred on when what you need isn't here.

Don't expect a guaranteed outcome or a fixed timeline. It depends on what's underneath, how long it's been there, whether there's an underlying condition that needs its own treatment, and — this is half the work — how much of the plan you can sustain in your real life. A perfect plan you can't follow is worth nothing.