More on Dr. Lauren McClure
My journey to medicine wound through fine arts, farming, cheesemaking, Buddhist practice, finance, and a stint as an assistant in high tech. Ultimately the pull to help others and a fascination with the underlying causes of a personal illness drew me to a medical degree, which I received from UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, MA. I completed my formal training at Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency in 2008 and was board-certified soon after.
Despite many wonderful teachers and colleagues in medical school and residency and beyond, and despite a passion for working with patients, I felt the insurance-based medical model focused mostly on disease and didn’t allow time for a deeper dive into wellness and prevention. Drawn to a more holistic process, I supplemented my family medicine training with conferences on nutrition and integrative medicine.
I discovered functional medicine in 2010 and for years have pursued study of this science-based method. Functional medicine centers on the whole person, and this approach makes a vigorous effort to uncover the complex web of root causes and depend less on pharmaceuticals to treat symptoms. I have great respect for modern Western medicine and its astonishing achievements, including pharmaceuticals and vaccines and trauma care, and at the same time feel we can more effectively treat and even prevent many of today’s chronic diseases with an emphasis on diet and lifestyle modifications.
I worked as a primary care physician and then in addiction treatment for years, while trying (with difficulty) to incorporate a holistic process into short infrequent disease-focused office visits. In founding McClure Wellness, which concentrates on helping clients develop long-term healthy habits to support their brain function, I have finally been able to make the shift to the kind of medical work that satisfies the deep dive approach that I prefer and that helps clients truly thrive.
I live in a Vermont community that values sustainable living, and care for my mother there, using the Tiny Habits behavioral change method to incorporate as many aspects of Dr Dale Bredesen’s brain health protocols as possible in my own life. Brain health is a truly exciting, essential, and burgeoning field and one in which diet and lifestyle changes appear to be significantly more effective than pharmaceuticals. And those are the paths I can lay out for my clients on an individualized basis and help guide them along.
