Can You See an Integrative Pediatrician and Still Keep Your Regular Pediatrician?

It's one of the first questions parents ask us, and it usually arrives a little nervously — as though booking with us means firing someone else.

"If we come to you, do we have to leave our pediatrician?"

No. And we'd gently push back on any practice that suggested otherwise.

Integrative pediatric care is an and, not an instead of. Here's what that actually looks like in practice.

What your pediatrician does

Your pediatrician handles the backbone of your child's medical care. Well visits and growth tracking. Acute illness. Immunizations. School and sports forms. Referrals to specialists when something needs a specialist. Continuity of a medical record that follows your child through childhood.

That's a large and important job, and none of it moves when you add an integrative practice to the picture. If anything, we'd rather you keep that relationship strong, because a child whose care is scattered across providers who don't know about each other is worse off than a child with one solid primary relationship.

What an integrative practice adds

The gap most families describe isn't a gap in their pediatrician's competence. It's a gap in what a fifteen-minute visit is built to do.

A sick visit is designed to answer the question in front of it. It is not designed to sit with the pattern across eighteen months of visits, or to work through the symptoms that never fully resolved, or to take up the questions still sitting there after everything came back normal.

That's a different job, and it needs a different amount of time and a different set of tools.

At Orzu Kids, those tools may include:

• Functional medicine — proven diagnostic tools and interventions, used when appropriate

• Nutritional counseling — personalized dietary plans, including for gut health, ADHD, and anxiety

• Mind-body medicine — techniques such as breathing exercises and meditation to support emotional health

• Homeopathy — one option among several, chosen when it fits the child

• Genomic testing — advanced testing to understand a child's genetic makeup and inform the plan

Not competing answers to what your pediatrician already told you. More angles on the same child.

The concerns we treat this way

Orzu Kids works with children ages 4 and up on concerns including ADHD and ADD, anxiety and mood disorders, allergies and asthma, gut and digestive issues, behavioral concerns, and skin conditions such as eczema and acne.

You'll notice all of those are conditions your pediatrician also sees. That overlap is the point. Two clinicians can look at the same child with different training and different amounts of time, and both add something.

What good coordination actually looks like

Bring what's already been done. Prior labs, specialist notes, evaluations, the medication list. We would much rather build on work that's already happened than start you from zero and repeat it.

Don't stop anything on your own. If your child has prescribed medication or an existing treatment plan — an asthma action plan, an ADHD prescription, an allergy protocol — keep it exactly as it is, and involve the clinician who wrote it in any conversation about changing it.

Tell your pediatrician. Most are glad to know. Care works better when everyone is looking at the same picture.

Expect us to stay in our lane. We're one part of your child's care team, not the whole of it. That's how it should be.

A note for referring clinicians

If you're a pediatrician, developmental pediatrician, psychiatrist, or therapist with a family who wants to go deeper on root-cause work while staying in your care, we accept practitioner referrals through our Practitioner Referrals form.

We're built as an adjunct to primary and specialty care. Families stay with you.

Who this tends to be a fit for

Parents who reach out are often somewhere in this territory:

• Everything came back normal, and the child still isn't right

• The same symptom keeps returning after each round of treatment

• The current plan is working partially, and you want to understand what's underneath it

• You want a whole-child picture rather than one system at a time

• You're not looking to leave conventional medicine — you're looking to add to it

If that sounds familiar, none of it requires ending a relationship you value.

Practical details

Orzu Kids is an integrative pediatric practice at 501 N. Salem Street, Suite 201, Apex, North Carolina, serving families across the Triangle. Dr. Arthi Kachru Khazanchi is a board-certified Integrative Medicine Pediatrician who practices Functional Medicine, Homeopathy, and follows Ayurvedic principles.

We're a cash-pay clinic and do not accept insurance.

The first step is an Initial Case Review — a conversation about what's been going on with your child, and a chance to decide whether this approach is a fit for your family.

Schedule a Complimentary Initial Case Review.