Find the answers you’re looking for

Functional medicine is a leading-edge approach to healthcare that addresses chronic health conditions by identifying and treating their root causes. Research shows that issues such as autoimmune disease, digestive disorders, thyroid imbalances, women’s health concerns, skin conditions, and cardiometabolic issues are often influenced by factors like diet, lifestyle, and environment. Rather than just managing symptoms, functional medicine takes a personalised, whole-body approach to restoring health.

Our practitioners take the time to understand your full health picture – including your medical history, diet, lifestyle, and environment – so we can uncover what’s driving your symptoms. This process often involves functional pathology testing to provide deeper insights into areas such as inflammation, gut health, hormone balance, and metabolic function.

With this comprehensive understanding, we develop a personalised treatment plan tailored to your unique needs, helping to address the underlying causes of your health concerns. The goal is not just short-term relief, but long-term, sustainable health and wellbeing.

Around 80% of people struggle to achieve their health goals due to deeply ingrained habits, especially those related to food, which are often influenced by emotional connections. Health coaches are experts in the science of behavioural change, helping you navigate these challenges with clarity and ease.

They understand the difficulties of making lasting changes because they’ve often faced similar obstacles themselves. As your guide, supporter, and accountability partner, health coaches make it easier to stay on track. Many of our patients find the support from their health coach invaluable, often realising its true importance after experiencing it firsthand.

Health coaching is a key part of our service because it’s essential for achieving lasting results. While it’s a departure from traditional healthcare approaches, we believe that combining functional medicine with coaching is the most effective way to drive meaningful change. It’s this holistic approach that has contributed to our success, including winning the 2024 ATMS Clinic of the Year award. We’re confident that working with a coach will set you up for long-term success.

Working with Melbourne Functional Medicine could be the perfect fit if you’re highly motivated, curious, and ready to make lasting changes to your health. If you’re facing ongoing health challenges and want a personalised, root-cause approach – you’ll find the support and expertise you need.

Our team will work with you to uncover the underlying causes of your health concerns, creating a comprehensive plan that goes beyond just managing symptoms.

If you’re eager to invest time and energy, learn new habits, and take an active role in your healing, we’re here to guide you through a transformative process toward long-term health improvements.

It’s important to note that our practitioners are naturopaths, not medical doctors. If your main goal is simply to obtain a prescription, we may not be the right fit. However, we do collaborate with medical practitioners and can support your care as part of a broader health team.

The right service depends on your goals, health complexity, and the level of support you’re seeking.

Some people prefer structured, longer-term care, while others want appointment-to-appointment support or test interpretation. If you’re unsure, we can help you determine the most appropriate starting point based on your situation – you don’t need to have it figured out before reaching out.

Book a call with us, or call us on 1300 614 814 to explore your options.

Yes, we work with patients worldwide via telehealth. Please note that managing international logistics – such as lab testing and supplement delivery – can sometimes result in delays. We do our best to minimise these where possible.

No, you do not need a formal diagnosis or a referral before booking an appointment with our practitioners.

Many patients come to us with symptoms but without a clear label. Our role is to assess patterns, review your history, and determine appropriate next steps. A diagnosis can be helpful, but it is not required to begin working with us.

Our practitioners are highly qualified functional medicine-trained naturopaths with a strong academic and clinical background. All have:

• A minimum of 10 years’ clinical experience, with most having worked in healthcare for over 20–30 years
• A Bachelor of Health Science (Naturopathy) or equivalent
• Formal training in functional medicine, a systems-based approach to addressing root causes of illness
• Experience in teaching at tertiary level, including institutions like Endeavour College and Torrens University

This depth of knowledge and experience allows them to confidently manage chronic health conditions with evidence-based natural therapies.

Our health coaches are fully accredited by HCANZA (Health Coaches Australia and New Zealand Association), which means they meet rigorous standards of professionalism, training, and ongoing development.

Many of our coaches come from a background in healthcare and have firsthand experience navigating their own health challenges. This gives them a deep sense of empathy and understanding for what it’s like to make meaningful changes to diet, lifestyle, and habits.

They’re not just knowledgeable – they’re compassionate, supportive partners who walk alongside you throughout your health journey.

Our practitioners follow a functional medicine approach – meaning they take time to understand the whole picture, not just your symptoms. This includes:

• Exploration of your health history, lifestyle, diet, environment, and more
• Use of advanced testing (where needed) to help uncover the root causes of your health concerns
• A personalised plan involving dietary changes, nutritional and herbal supplements, and lifestyle strategies
• Ongoing guidance and refinement of your treatment plan over time

They work with patients over the long term – not only to address the issue that brought you in, but to support your overall health and wellbeing as your needs evolve. This long-term, partnership-based care is central to how they practise.

While they aren’t medical doctors, our practitioners often collaborate with GPs to ensure your care is safe, coordinated, and combines the best of both conventional and integrative approaches.

While our practitioners are not medical doctors and cannot prescribe medication, they offer a complementary approach to conventional care. GPs typically focus on diagnosis and prescribing, often within short appointments. In contrast, our practitioners take a functional medicine approach – spending more time with patients to understand the root causes of health issues, rather than just treating symptoms. They use a combination of advanced testing (when needed), targeted dietary and lifestyle interventions, and natural therapies like nutritional and herbal supplements.

Their focus is on supporting the body’s systems – such as digestive, hormonal, and immune health – to promote long-term healing.

They also consider factors like stress, sleep, and environmental influences that may be affecting your health. Importantly, they often work in collaboration with GPs to ensure your care is safe, coordinated, and combines the best of both conventional and integrative medicine.

Healthcare is deeply personal, and what works for one person may not work the same for another. We provide a deeply investigative, personalised approach, thoughtfully tailored to best suit your health picture and health goals, and as such, it is difficult to reduce our success rates to a single statistic.

To learn more about the kinds of results we get patients, you can check out the patient success stories page, and our Google reviews.

We understand that finding the right practitioner is key to your healthcare journey. Our approach is personalised, and our team consists of highly skilled practitioners with broad experience across a range of health conditions, along with key special areas of interest.

When you call the clinic or book a discovery call, you’ll either speak with our friendly reception team or one of our health coaches. We’ll ask you a series of questions to understand your health goals and challenges. Based on this information, we’ll recommend a practitioner who has the most relevant experience in the areas you’re looking to address, to help you get you the best possible results. You can also take a look at our team here to get a sense of who’d be the perfect practitioner for you.

At our functional medicine clinic in Melbourne, we work with people experiencing a wide range of chronic conditions – from thyroid dysfunction and gut health issues to autoimmunity, skin problems, hormonal imbalances, and more. Our investigative, whole-person approach is ideal for complex or unresolved health concerns that haven’t improved with conventional care.

Common concerns we support include:

• Thyroid and hormonal imbalances
• Digestive issues like IBS, SIBO, and food intolerances
• Autoimmune diseases
• Acne, eczema, and other skin conditions
• Fatigue, sleep issues, and mood changes
• Cardiovascular and metabolic dysfunction
• Children’s health conditions

Whether your symptoms are new or long-standing, Melbourne Functional Medicine offers the expertise, time, and personalised care to help you work toward lasting improvements.

Yes, we work with children and adolescents. We’ve had the privilege of supporting many children and their families through health journeys, witnessing incredible transformations. From resolving chronic issues to improving overall well-being, we’ve seen children go from struggling to thriving, laying the foundation for a brighter and healthier future.

Every success story is a testament to the power of personalised care, and a reminder of the lasting impact of good health in the early stages of life.

Pricing depends on the type of service and level of support you choose.

We offer different pathways, including structured care options and appointment-to-appointment consultations, and fees vary accordingly. Rather than presenting pricing without context, we recommend reviewing our services to understand what each option includes before making a decision.

Consultation fees for our flexible functional medicine service and the deep dive are paid at the time of booking. The program fee is payable upon signing up to our program, with the option to split the payment into monthly instalments through our trusted payment partners.

Any supplements or lab testing will be charged separately.

Additional costs may include laboratory testing or supplements, depending on your needs. 

Your practitioner will discuss the costs for any tests or supplements they recommend in your sessions.

Functional medicine is not yet covered, however naturopathy is eligible for private health insurance rebates in Australia following recent legislative changes.

Inclusion, benefit levels, and availability are determined by individual insurers. Not all policies will automatically include naturopathy, and rebate amounts may vary.

We recommend reviewing your insurer’s Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) or contacting your health fund directly to confirm your level of cover and eligibility.

Most of the testing we do seeks to understand how pathways or systems in the body function. These tests are typically more in-depth and comprehensive than you would’ve encountered before.

We sometimes request standard blood chemistry from your GP for more basic tests, and if we need to go more in-depth, such as looking at microbiome health or food sensitivities, we use the world’s leading labs:

Precision Analytical

Genova Diagnostics

KBMO

NutriPath

Metametrix

Mosaic Diagnostics

Bioceuticals for DNA testing

Many of these labs are overseas, so test results can take a few weeks to come back.

Read our article on functional testing here.

Unfortunately, Medicare only pays for standard tests, conventional medical tests, many of which we find don’t give a clear enough window into your health. The tests we order are different from conventional tests you’ve likely experienced and found to be unhelpful before finding us.

GPs, unless they’re functional medicine trained, are only trained in interpreting standard tests that look for pathologies (disease) rather than looking purely at assessing the function of pathways or systems. The functional pathology tests that we use can identify pre-disease states and look at other determining factors that contribute to health symptoms and diseases.

Learning about and interpreting the latest functional pathology tests takes years of functional medicine training and involves continued education as new scientific insights arise.

Given these labs are privately billed, we seek to balance the need for more data on your health with a desire to look after your wallet. Therefore, the amount of lab tests we do varies by individual. Typically, when we ask a patient to invest in testing of this nature, the cost is worth the investment as we uncover insights that inform their recovery.

Our clinic hours are:

9:00am – 5:00pm Monday to Thursday

However, you can reach us outside of those hours via phone or email.

186 Buckhurst Street, South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Telehealth appointments are also available for those who can’t make it to our clinic.

Yes. Phone or video consultations are available for those unable to make it to the clinic due to location, time or illness. Simply let us know when you’re booking in, and we’ll organise that for you.