Integrative therapy
The brain and body aren’t separate systems — they’re constantly informing one another. Most conventional lab work doesn’t capture that conversation. It’s built to screen for disease, not to map the patterns shaping how you actually feel.
We work differently. Advanced testing lets us look at hormones, neurotransmitters, immune function, metabolism, detoxification, nutrient status, and gene expression — and read those patterns against your lived experience. Low mood that looks like depression may turn out to be a methylation pattern. Brain fog that persists through therapy may turn out to be a gut imbalance. Burnout that looks like anxiety may be a cortisol dysregulation. The point isn’t to collect data for its own sake — it’s to find the specific levers that matter for you, so we can intervene with precision instead of guesswork.
Labs at Elsewhere are part of care, not a standalone service. They inform integrative psychiatry, integrative medicine, and whole-person planning — used adjunctively, with clinical judgment, when they’re likely to change what we recommend.
Labs help us see patterns that symptoms alone can’t show — and target interventions that fit your specific biology.
This service may be a fit, if you’re looking for:
This isn’t a standardized protocol, a prepackaged process, or whatever’s trending.You won’t get basic underloaded band exercises, a passive quick fix, or have to commit to coming in for a lifetime. It’s not insurance-driven care that depends on a physician’s script and a 15-minute clock. And it’s not narrowly focused on a single symptom while ignoring the rest of you.
Lab orders are part of care at Elsewhere. Our care is offered through insurance, private pay, and HSA/FSA, depending on the provider. Lab testing itself is largely cash-based and paid directly to outside lab companies and pricing varies by test. We’ll provide direct contact information for the labs we work with so you can confirm costs before ordering.
What we call symptoms are always messages. Because the mind is not separate from the body, we know that part of the process of decoding the message is to interpret the corresponding biological shift or pattern. This can lead to a more precise interpretation of the experience.
Let’s say you are experiencing depression. While some experiences of depression may be clearly rooted in environmental circumstances, research is becoming more and more clear that there is no clear separation between an external experience and the bodily-based changes. Part of the depressive experience may include, for example, low vitamin D, hypomethylation, inflammation, B complex imbalances, or even impaired mitochondrial functioning. These things all influence resilience and the capacity to process experiences. So that same depression may be less overwhelming in an optimized biological context.
Taking the previous example of depression. Let’s say that we find a low vitamin D and inflammation reflected through an elevated high-sensitivity c-reactive protein. The treatment plan may include therapy and/or a medication or natural product, but it would certainly be recommended to gear interventions toward correcting the low vitamin D and inflammation. This can be achieved through targeted supplements and focused lifestyle modifications. At the end of the day, you are providing a more holistic yet targeted approach to the depression experience.
No! As with the rest of the toolkit we offer, we want to move forward with what makes the most sense to you. In collaboration with your provider, you can decide if adding labs to your plan of care aligns with your goals. That being said, we always strongly encourage laboratory investigation to illuminate the biological aspects of your experience that are unclear.
Your provider will have an honest discussion with you about what makes the most sense for your individual plan of care. Some companies recommend an excessive amount of very cost-ineffective testing. Although we want to be comprehensive, we don’t want to lose sight of you. We will help you navigate options to shed appropriate light on your unique experiences.
