synRG Integrative Health and Wellness

Having been raised in Europe, I took up a smoking habit in my late teens. Although I ate a very healthy diet, I was always getting sick. My smoking habit resulted in waking up one day with severe chest pain. I was determined to quit smoking and restore my body to optimal health. In order to not gain weight, I took on training for a marathon. I remember running on the first day and not making it to the end of the street. The damage I had done to my body was evident and I was determined to reverse it. Our body is a complex system that is influenced by many factors such as diet, environment, genetics and lifestyle. I completed my first marathon six months later. That is when I became acutely aware that given the proper tools, our bodies have an amazing ability to heal themselves. I had over 15 years of clinical experience as a nurse before I became a Nurse Practitioner. I will always cherish my years of working with HIV/AIDS and cancer patients. They taught me so much about the strength and perseverance of the human body and spirit. Years of watching patients cycle through a system that is profit driven and forces physicians to practice mass-produced, assembly line medicine made me realize that I could not in good conscience practice in such a setting. Don’t get me wrong, conventional medicine is unsurpassed in diagnostics and treating acute situations. The conventional medical model falls short in the treatment of chronic disease such as heart disease, diabetes, auto-immune disease to name a few. Functional medicine looks to understand all that influences our health, getting at the root of illness and how lifestyle and environment interact with genetics to create the...