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 5 years ago, while working at my outpatient therapy clinic. One morning, I woke up with my belly bloated, but went to work thinking it would pass as I moved around as the day progressed. Not long after arriving at the clinic, I faced severe paralyzing abdominal pain. By 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's schedule. The pain was so excruciating that I considered driving myself to the ER. Within about 45 min I was terrified as my belly became severly distended. 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 a few months prior. 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 was known to help alieviate a distended belly. I started implementing the yoga poses and finally after about 90 min of excruciating pain, the supplement and yoga poses worked! My bloated 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, as ifan alien was living in my body. 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 a clinician and business owner when my belly was such a mess . 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 knew there had to be something that brough this on.

I remembered that for years, I struggled with anxiety, but wanted to avoid prescription medications and there side effects. Throughout the years, I read many books on anxiety and herbs. . 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. When those antibiotics had failed, I had researched and used an herbal tincture that had resolved his ear infection once and for all. That was the last time any of my 3 children ever had an 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 and and love sharing them with others who are also looking for natural solutions.