Dr. Mark A. Scott’s Bio:

Mark A. Scott, D.C., C.N.S., C.F.M.P. has been in the healthcare field since 1996. He is the founder of the Total Health Center, a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner and Board Certified in Integrative Medicine. He has been described as enthusiastic, energetic, motivational, inspiring, and informative. He listens and answers questions; contributes information; and is genuinely concerned with each patient’s recovery and health. He loves what he does, and it shows.

As a healthcare practitioner, author, lecturer, and perpetual seeker of knowledge, Dr. Scott is well respected and looked to as an expert in the natural health care field. In addition, he has given hundreds of health care seminars. He is enthusiastic about talking to people. His mission is to get people better and keep them healthy.

What life events or challenges that you have experienced (could be minor, could be major) whether you have experienced them directly or via someone close to you, have had any type of impact on your desire to have a practice focus on patients with mental health challenges?

I have been studying nutrition and health my whole life. As a kid, I was interested in vitamins and what they could do, I started working out with weights at a young age and this eventually led me to pursue a career helping people get healthy. My pursuit of health led me to Functional Medicine and as I started to see patients with a variety of health conditions, I continued to see people report improvements in anxiety, depression, brain fog, ADHD, and even Bipolar Syndromes. This sparked something in me to dig deeper into these cases.

How did those events impact you emotionally/morally? How, if at all did those events impact the way you view how our current system teaches us to treat patients with mental health challenges?

The miracles I see with using a functional approach to health are rewarding but also disturbing. Our current healthcare system uses a limited paradigm that hinders progress with many patients. Corporate medicine controls the type of care and information patients receive about mental health. This message leads the patient to the belief that their only hope is to be medicated. They are told that they have a diagnosis, and no one understands why they developed it and that the only solution is medication. My mission is to help people understand how they developed their problem and empower them with the tools to reverse it and prevent it from recurring.

What methods or practices do you utilize to help individuals get/feel better?

The great thing about Functional Medicine is that it is a whole-person approach. By whole person, this includes their lifestyle habits, diet, nutrition, family and past medical history, sleep, sexual function, energy levels, exercise habits, EMF exposure and other toxic exposures, bowel function, etc.   

A comprehensive workup is critical to establishing the underlying dysfunctions that are contributing to specific neurological issues. Understanding that the whole body is connected and that problems in the intestines can contribute to anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges. I can have 7 people with a diagnosis of depression, and they can have 7 totally different reasons for developing it and need seven totally different treatments. The idea of treating the diagnosis and that everyone with depression needs an antidepressant does not cut it. Treating the person is the only way to truly get your life back!