My Journey to Becoming a Functional Medicine Provider

I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by a circle of women who believed in the power of prevention. My most valuable lessons growing up include eat fresh cooked food, grown in season, and supplement when necessary. You could say I was raised from birth in the culture of using food as medicine.

One day as a teenager, I was having a discussion with my Aunt Rhett about this new grocery store…Whole Foods. She refused to shop there, because she did not understand how they had ripe strawberries in the middle of January. 

My family is from Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Ardmore is located a stones-throw from the Philadelphia city line and the end of Lancaster Avenue, where the Amish would travel since 1937 to set up a farmer’s market. My 3 aunts cooked all the holiday meals for my entire, very large family and grew up shopping at that market.

My Aunt Vivie had a house in Cape May, NJ where we would all go every summer. We drove the old back roads and stopped at the NJ farm stands for corn and lima beans to make succotash to go along with the fresh caught fish from the ocean, courtesy of my dad and the others who went deep-sea fishing.

My aunt Rhett didn’t quite understand global food markets, but she did understand that locally sourced food grown and eaten in season not only had the highest nutritional value, but just ‘made the most sense.’ My aunt Vivie used to say, “common sense ain’t much common.” Their dedication to common sense began my journey down the integrative medicine path.

My mother was introduced to supplements by a co-worker’s aunt who happened to be an Osteopath. She invited them over to stay, when after offering them some tea, was advised to get rid of her aluminum tea pot. This sparked a conversation about proper nutrition and food preparation techniques for optimizing health. That initial conversation sparked a curiosity in my mother for researching preventive treatments during the early seventies.

When I decided to study a natural form of healing and medicine, it was an obvious choice given my background. But a personal challenge expanded my curiosity by necessity. In my mid-forties, I was busy working while dealing with a severe case of plantar fasciitis, headaches, fatigue, and brain fog. 

About six years earlier, I injured myself playing tennis. My instructor was guiding us through warm-up drills and asked us to hop on one foot! I heard every bone in my foot crunch. Then she said, “hop on the other foot!” Before I could process what happened, I complied with the command with the same result.

That summer I suffered from a debilitating case of excruciating pain upon awakening. I could not walk in the morning until my feet warmed up and was unable to walk for long periods after that. The worst part was I couldn’t wear the cute sandals I bought that summer!

That initial injury became a chronic a problem. For a while, treatments enabled me to function. I did a lot of massage therapy, some acupuncture, and yoga to stretch my calves and strengthen my feet. But the pain would come and go.

I gained weight and felt sluggish and stiff. Workouts were unproductive and just left me more tired. A few years later, my allergies started to cause severe headaches. I was exhausted, was having difficulty making decisions, and generally feeling awful. My friends kept trying to tell me it was menopause, but I knew better. I knew something else wasn’t right.

My doctor told me nothing was wrong. My labs were stellar. I have low blood pressure. I tried to use what I knew, massage, herbal medicine, and acupuncture. I got some good results, but the headaches kept coming. I noticed that they became intense exactly 4 hours prior to a big storm approaching. In a final desperate attempt for some relief, I turned back to my books to see if there was something I missed.

It was August, and I was looking to take some herbs to prevent my annual September allergy-sinus head cold. I did not experience them in California, but they came back strong after moving to Maryland. When reading a clinical herb guide, I read a single line I hadn’t noticed before…”20 percent of allergy sinus headaches can be caused by food allergies…” Food allergies?!?!? How had I not noticed this before?

After speaking with my mom, who told me my brother also has an issue with one of the 8 foods that typically cause reactions, I decided to stop eating that food. Three days later, I found myself in the bathroom rather frequently…for about two weeks.

I woke up one day exactly two weeks later and felt like someone removed a curtain of fog that had blocked the sun for several years. No pain. Clear thinking. More energy. Workouts were productive. It was astonishing. I did not have one headache that year. I started a new job a few days later in September and was officially introduced to SAAT (Soliman Auricular Acupuncture Treatment) by a colleague.

The spark for combining Functional Medicine with TCM was lit!

Acupuncture practice was developed during a time when there was no chemical pollution, industrial farming, corporate food production, electrical pollution, etc. Functional medicine added that final piece of the puzzle to address what I was dealing with…chronic inflammation caused my modern life.

My personal approach to functional medicine will always begin with nutrition interventions and herbal treatment first. We will only do targeted lab assessment if necessary, and minimal supplementation.

Call for a free consultation to discuss if my approach to functional medicine works for you.