Frequently Asked Questions

Wellness is a broad topic. A simple approach to living a healthier life is understanding how most people in our society become unhealthy. The CDC tracks this information, monitoring the most common causes of death in the United States. Any conversation about longevity and wellness should include how your individual lifestyle and family history contribute to your risk for these conditions. This includes in-depth conversations of conditions like high cholesterol, alcohol use, smoking, nutrition and exercise. Understanding you helps us make a specific plan for keeping you healthy, and this takes time not often available in the traditional medical model.

Another focus of our conversations is your goals are for aging. Have you been concerned about your parents’ or grandparents’ aging process and their limitations? What do you want the last few decades of your life to look like? Thinking about these concerns now can help us a develop a plan to keep you functional and engaged through every phase of life.

hinoki also believes that any wellness conversation should incorporate all the factors that make up who you are. This includes counseling on a broader range of topics than you typically experience at your primary doctor, including healthy skin habits, stress management, environmental risks, contrast therapy and sleep routines.

Scientific evidence is at the heart of how we practice. One of the many reasons we started this clinic was to address the never ending stream of baseless claims on the internet, the “bro-science” you hear in the gym, and the click-bait news stories. We appreciate that most people just want to live well but don’t know how to navigate all the noise.

After understanding your risk and your goals, we work together to decide what laboratory testing best suits you, using a science based framework to risk factor reduction. With this in mind, we appreciate laboratory testing isn’t always affordable, and want to work together to see what works for you. We then make specific, scientific based changes to your fitness routine, nutritional choices and sleep habits. We also discuss what medications and supplements you take and monitor how your changes influence your current regimen.

We are inspired by the natural world and particularly the cypress family of trees. They are known to be naturally long-living, and resistant to disease (such as bacteria, viruses, rot and fungi). Because of this natural resistance, wooden structures built with cypress, particularly hinoki cypress, are some of the longest standing buildings in existence. Additionally, hinoki cypress has a unique balsamic, citrusy scent that is associated with health and relaxation. It is also one of the few cypresses that can thrive in our PNW climate.

We see your body as your home. We want to help you build a foundation that will be naturally long-living and resistant to disease, like the hinoki cypress.

At hinoki, we are committed to creating a welcoming and respectful environment where every patient feels valued, safe and heard. We celebrate what makes you unique and look forward to working with patients from all backgrounds, identities, and cultures. We see adult clients throughout the spectrum of age, but are unable to see minors at this time.

It is never too early to start thinking about prevention and lifestyle. There is an abundance of research suggesting the slow but consistent pace chronic disease follows over time.

Longevity is a general term used to reference the pursuit of living longer. You may have also heard the terms “lifespan” and “healthspan” in regards to longevity.

Lifespan is the number of years that we live, while healthspan is the number of those years that are minimally impacted by disease. The overall goal of longevity interventions is to focus on living better, for longer.

No. While Dr. Werner is board certified in Internal Medicine, the goal of hinoki is to serve as a specialty consultant, and an adjunct to your relationship with your primary care provider. It is important to have your primary care doctor as well as medical insurance in case of emergency or if a need for more advanced medical intervention arises. We are happy to communicate with your primary care team about advancements in your lifestyle management and any necessary adjustments to your medications.

No, hinoki does not bill insurance. We do not interface with any private or public insurances. This includes workers compensation, motor vehicle insurance and all other forms of insurance. We do not fill out paperwork for family medical leave, and do not complete other forms of state leave paperwork. Please see your primary care doctor for these needs. Unfortunately due to strict federal law, we cannot see any clients who have Medicare or Medicaid.

We do not do business with insurance companies because we choose to make our care to you as simple and affordable as possible. Our services have a specific cost, that is it.

Yes. Medications can be an important part of prevention and management of chronic disease. We are not your primary care doctor, but we may make adjustments to your medication regimen, in addition to aggressive lifestyle interventions. Dr. Werner has extensive experience in management of many common medical conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, and it is expected that intensive lifestyle changes with nutrition and exercise will reduce your need for these medications. We can assist with this in the short term, and can update your primary care doctor for ongoing treatment.

For continuity of care, it is best to get most of your prescription refills through your primary care doctor. hinoki does not prescribe any controlled substances, and we do not provide addiction medicine care.

The wellness industry exists because individuals want to take an active role in their health. Unfortunately, companies and influencers can take advantage of that desire, by trying to sell supplements that may not work, and might even be dangerous.

We appreciate that it can be intimidating to talk to your regular doctor about wellness, especially when visits are short, and hard to schedule. From a physician standpoint, we also understand that it can be difficult to keep up with current trends, given the complexity of medical care in the modern world.

We do our best to stay up to date with the wellness world, so we can answer your questions about supplements and current trends. If we don’t know, we can do research through trusted peer-reviewed sources. More importantly, we’d like to know why you feel a certain supplement is of interest to you, as it may be a surrogate for another issue that could be addressed in a different way.

No. While we have interest in supplements for specific problems, and are happy to discuss them with you based on the best current evidence, we believe it is a conflict of interest to sell things to you.

We are cautious of the supplement industry because as a whole, it is not regulated. When supplements may be beneficial to you, we will teach you how to choose the safest version.

Overall, we believe you should only take medications and supplements that you need to manage current medical problems, reduce your risk for future chronic disease, or achieve your performance goals.

We know that life can be busy, and we want to work around your schedule. For that reason, we offer in-person, Telehealth, or phone visits for most visit types. We find that patients get the most value when meeting in person for the initial visit and movement visit. For Telehealth and phone visits we can only see patients who are physically in the state of Oregon during the visit.

Do you ever wonder how your doctor makes decisions about your medical care?

Evidence-based medicine refers to the application of the scientific method to specific clinical questions. This helps guide decisions about medical treatments in the context of an individual patient.

The “evidence” refers to the critical review of experimental studies that have been performed over time. Studies come in many shapes and sizes, utilizing different lenses to test a specific question. Examples of these include epidemiological studies, observational studies and randomized controlled trials. Each have their own strengths and weakness, but together the different styles are necessary in the progression of scientific knowledge.

These studies are how we determine if certain treatments work or don’t work for specific problems. One key to evidence-based medicine is that the data is reviewed by a panel of experts in the field of question.

Recently, science and the method of understanding our natural world has come under attack in the modern political arena. The power of testing a hypothesis does not favor either side of the political aisle, and it is important to remember that the scientific method is apolitical.

How your doctor thinks and makes decisions is important. At hinoki, we use critical appraisal of medical research, along with years of experience in medical practice, to individualize your medical care.

Current medical recommendations are based on applying a specific question to the scientific method to determine an answer. This can be done a number of ways, and one type of study you have have seen in the news or in social media is called a “randomized controlled trial”.

This type of study often involves a large pool of patients, randomly separated into two groups. One group receives the treatment, and the other group receives no treatment (often referred to as a placebo). In the ideal scenario, both the patients in the study, and the scientists performing the study, do not know which group is which.

The goal of randomly assigning patients to the groups, and keeping that assignment hidden from the patients and scientists, is to limit any influence on the results of the study.

These types of studies are often complicated to interpret. At hinoki, we keep in mind that critical appraisal of research is more than reading an abstract. There are many moving parts in a study that require careful examination.

There are also many other types of experimental studies. Each has their upside and downside. We rely on the full spectrum of research, while being aware of the pros and cons of how studies are done, to draw meaningful information applicable to your health.

Fitness trackers come in many forms and can be a useful addition to your regimen, depending on your goals. They tend to use different proprietary formulas for calculating HRV, sleep trends, and other metrics, so they can be hard to compare to one another. The most useful way to utilize fitness trackers is to monitor your own data over time. We would love to see your data, and record it as you progress through your goals, so bring whatever app/device you use to your visits.