Nutrition practice offers data-based treatments
Good nutrition runs in the Newton family.
Coco Newton, the wife of Lipitor co-discoverer and Esperion Therapeutics founder Roger Newton, is pursuing her own “functional medicine” practice in the same facility as her husband. Roger Newton’s expertise in cholesterol drugs is well known, but his doctorate degree was in nutrition.
Coco’s nutrition practice, Lifetime Nutrition LLC, offers dietary-based therapies to patients with chronic health conditions such as digestive disorders, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and hormonal imbalance.
She said her dietary recommendations are based heavily on data derived from nutritional tests.
“For so many people the ravages of our typical diet in America are causing chronic disease because we’re eating things that were not intended by nature,” she said. “Functional medicine doesn’t just look at the eradication of disease. It gets to the source of what’s going on.”
Coco hopes to eventually expand her practice into an entire clinic. She conducts her practice in Esperion’s building, the Michigan Life Science Innovation Center, which is now managed by economic development organization Ann Arbor SPARK.
Other tenants include University of Michigan spinoff Lycera and Velesco Pharmaceuticals. The building is about 60 percent occupied.
Roger Newton played an instrumental role in helping SPARK, Wayne County and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. collaborate to buy the 57,518-square-foot facility from Pfizer for $3.5 million in 2008.
“It’s exciting to see it come to pass that the building is going to be used for its best use,” Roger Newton said. “That was one of the biggest concerns that I had was that it was going to go the way of the wrecking ball.”
Contact AnnArbor.com’s Nathan Bomey at (734) 623-2587 or nathanbomey@annarbor.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.