Nutritional Psychiatry

Nutrition Is Central to Mental Health — Not Peripheral to It

Psychiatric symptoms don't always have purely psychiatric origins. When depression, anxiety, brain fog, or mood instability persists despite medication or therapy, the missing investigation is often biological: nutritional status, gut function, inflammatory burden, and hormonal balance that conventional psychiatry rarely examines.

Nutritional psychiatry addresses these biochemical conditions directly. At Evolution Medicine, this work is integrated with psychiatric and psychotherapy care — not offered as a separate wellness service.

Helaine Polanco, MS — Functional Nutritionist

Ms. Polanco specializes in gut-brain health and women's mental health. She holds a Master's degree in Nutrition from St. Elizabeth University and advanced training in functional nutrition through Restorative Wellness Solutions, with clinical experience at Parsley Health. Her work focuses on identifying and correcting the specific nutritional and metabolic factors that affect mood, cognition, and treatment response — through functional testing, not generalized protocols.

Our Approach

Nutritional and Gut-Brain Assessment — Ms. Polanco begins with a comprehensive intake covering dietary patterns, digestive symptoms, energy levels, sleep quality, stress load, hormonal history, and supplement use. This assessment determines what testing is warranted and where to focus.

Functional Laboratory Testing — When indicated, testing evaluates micronutrient levels, inflammatory markers, hormone balance, and gut microbiome status. Deficiencies in nutrients such as Omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, magnesium, iron, vitamin D, and zinc are common drivers of depression, anxiety, and poor treatment response — and are rarely identified in routine psychiatric care.

Personalized Nutrition Plan — Recommendations address the specific deficiencies and imbalances identified through assessment and testing. This includes dietary strategy, targeted supplementation, gut-healing protocols where relevant, and blood sugar regulation — designed for realistic implementation, not idealized compliance.

Ongoing Review and Adjustment — Follow-up appointments track laboratory changes and symptom response, refining the plan as the clinical picture evolves. Ms. Polanco coordinates directly with Dr. Lazarevic when nutritional findings intersect with psychiatric care or medication planning.

Nutrition, Substance Use, and Recovery

Substance use — including alcohol, stimulants, and opioids — depletes key nutrients and disrupts gut function in ways that compound the mental health symptoms driving use in the first place. Nutritional rehabilitation addresses the biological toll that often persists well into recovery: the inflammation, hormonal disruption, and micronutrient depletion that standard psychiatric care rarely examines.

For patients in any stage of recovery — or for those where substance use is a variable in a more complex clinical picture — nutritional psychiatry is a natural and often essential extension of integrative psychiatric care.

What Makes This Different

Testing-driven, not protocol-driven — Recommendations reflect your actual biomarker results. There is no standard plan applied to every patient.

Integrated with psychiatric and psychotherapy care — Ms. Polanco works within the same clinical framework as Dr. Lazarevic and the practice's psychotherapy services. When nutritional findings are clinically relevant to treatment planning or medication, that coordination happens directly.

Available a la carte or within Momentum Care™ Packages — Nutritional psychiatry can be accessed independently or as part of a coordinated, fixed-fee treatment plan for more complex cases.

Still evaluating? These pages may help.

Understand the full approach → Integrative Psychiatry NYC
See structured nutrition plans → Nutritional Psychiatry Packages
Explore personalized coordinated care → Momentum Care™ Packages
Have questions? Frequently Asked Questions