I am a Occupational Therapist and a Board Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner. I have over 30 years of experience in the medical field working in various settings. My passion for Functional Medicine started about a 4 years ago. While working at a clinic. This one morning, I woke up with my belly not feeling well, but went to work anyway thinking it will pass as the day progresses. Not long after arriving at the clinic, I faced severe paralyzing abdominal pain. Around 9 AM, my belly became intensely bloated and brought on the most excrucitating pain that I had ever experienced (I had three child labors and this was much worse), forcing me to cancel my entire day of patients. The pain was so excruciating that I considered driving myself to the ER. Within about 45 min I was terrified at how distended my abdomen had become. While hunched over driving home in agony thinking about what I could do to get some relief, I remembered a supplement I heard about in a gut course I had taken. I drove to the nearest supplement store on my way home, hunched over and in agony, I managed to get the supplement. At this point I was trembling in pain and broke out in a cold sweat. I got home and quickly took the supplement and remembered a couple of yoga poses that I learned about a while back that help alieviate a distended belly. I started implementing the yoga poses and finally after about 90 min of excruciating pain, my belly started to finally subside. Feeling relief, I broke down in tears. Once I composed myself, I reached out to my doctor, who over the phone told me it must be gastritis. The next few weeks followed with rumbling like waves in my belly, followed by bouts of diarrhea, abdominal cramping, nausea, constipation. I had reached out to my doctor again, he told me it's probably IBS and that I would just need to live with it. The pain was so excruciating and so debilitating that I new there was no way that I could function like this. There was no way that I could work, be a mom, a wife and a clinician when my belly was not right. I always had to be near a bathroom as I could not predict what was going to happen. I knew I had to uncover the root cause of my gut issues and heal them.

I remembered that for years, I struggled with anxiety, but wanted to avoid prescription medications and thee side effects. Throughout the years, I read many books on anxiety. Eventually, I found great relief through the use of herbs and supplements rather than medications. Many years ago, my 1 year old son was prescribed four rounds of antibiotics for a recurring ear infection. Those antibiotics had failed. I had researched and used an herbal tincture that had resolved his ear infection. That was the last time any of my 3 children ever had a ear infection. I overcame postpartum depression naturally after years of searching for help from the medical community and being unheard and let down. My personal journey with gut issues, hormonal imbalances and treating my infant children naturally opened my eyes to the power of Functional Medicine.

Conventional medicine offered addictive medications that brought on other symptoms that then needed more medications to cover those symptoms. I was determined to find the "root cause". My experiences ignited my passion for learning about natural remedies.