My Journey to Functional Medicine
Working in healthcare since 2010, my views on health and how I practice have changed over the years and my journey to Functional Medicine was not what I anticipated. I have always been interested in living a healthy, active life and believed in the power of prevention and lifestyle medicine but much of what I believed to be true a decade ago has shifted, in so many ways for the better!
Early Career
Starting my nursing career at Georgetown University Hospital working in the ICU, I came to a quick realization that much of what was landing patients there was chronic disease – high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc. After witnessing this time and time again over the next few years, I decided to go back to NP school for Family Practice where I thought I would be on the preventive side of healthcare. Boy was I wrong.
What I envisioned as having time to counsel patients on nutrition, exercise, and sleep turned into quick visits that almost always ended up in writing a prescription. I ended up pivoting after graduation and going back to another love of mine, Neurology.
I was ultimately drawn to the Headache and Pain division because of the wide variety of treatments being utilized and the fact that lifestyle plays a pivotal role in migraine and my mentor at the University of Colorado also shared the same views that lifestyle medicine played such a role in chronic pain. It was here that I started my NP career with wonderful mentorship and learned a lot about academic medicine, research and got to treat those in need and help to take away their pain with a wide variety of modalities but I started to yearn for something more.
My Own health journey
Fast forward to my first pregnancy, when I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, gestational diabetes and intrauterine growth restriction and my whole world changed. I thought I was healthy, how could I be experiencing all of these complications? After a quick delivery of my baby girl, the transition to motherhood was daunting. Feeding issues, lack of sleep, the utter overwhelm was intense. Add in some, what I would come to find out, profound nutrient insufficiencies and my thyroid bouncing around like a bouncy ball and I was not feeling like myself at all. My journey to functional medicine didn’t really begin until we struggled to get pregnant after conceiving so early the first time. I started to question and wonder what else might be going on. Was there more to this thyroid disease than measuring a TSH and taking levothyroxine, it turns out there is much more (especially when it comes to fertility!). Were these nutrient insufficiencies from pregnancy and breastfeeding my first born for 16 months playing a role in all of this? They had to be! I felt frustrated that I was getting ZERO answers from my primary care team, so I took things into my own hands.
It was then that I started to look into more integrative approaches and question why this was happening and what I could do about it. Enter Functional Medicine. I started to learn what true prevention and disease reversal looked like – using myself as my first patient and trying to right the ship. And so my journey to Functional Medicine was a personal one.
I started taking courses with the Institute for Functional Medicine and became a certified practitioner in 2023. It was the most interesting and rewarding thing I had ever studied and I began to apply to myself, my family, my patients and anyone who would listen. I knew I had to share it with the world! With the love and support of my husband he encouraged me to open my own practice and see what happened. He believed in me, more than I believed in myself in the early days. And Wild Rice Wellness was born!
While conventional medicine has some truly amazing capabilities, it is missing the mark on early prevention of disease and taking the time to address underlying lifestyle factors that play a pivotal role in health and wellness.
This is why I love Functional Medicine! There is a saying in the Functional Medicine field – you either get into it because your sick or because you are smart and I like to think my journey to functional medicine was a little bit of both but I can’t wait to keep helping and learning!
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