wELCOME TO MYNATUROWELLNESS

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My practice is located Bonita Springs, and we see patients ranging from, you know, weight loss to hypertension, to diabetes. But I focus specifically on digestive wellness and helping my \patients who have who are dealing with Crohn's disease, IBS. or diverticulitis. Even patients that come to me and just say, “Hey, you know, I've just been bloated for a long time and I really can't find a solution”. So it runs the gamut of, of people it's, it's, it's basically, you know, a more of a, a, a primary care in that we can talk about all kinds of different things from mood to hormones, to fertility, and, and even beyond that.

I've got a, a passion for this because, with my own families health struggles, and I found through trial and error and through a lot of time that holistic healthcare was the best route.

I explored and learned more about holistic health using supplements, using herbs, using food as medicine. And so from that, it really catapulted me to go back to school after I got my bachelor's degree from the university of central Florida to go back to school and get my doctorate from the New Eden School of Natural Health and Herbal studies. And it's there where I really dove into the deeper understand of the body and holistic health. , you know, Why is garlic so good for your body? Why is Turmeric so anti-inflammatory? What is it doing in the body? And that was really the question I wanted to answer was why is this working? And how is it working so that I can help more people. And so that's what I've done by opening up my practice.

Wow. Wow. That, that's awesome. And what I love about, you know, again, your passion and what you do is, and you, you touched on it. I mean, those little things that something like bloating, you know, that we could all just kind of shrug off and go, yeah. You know, it, it's terrible, you know, I don't feel right. It, it really SAPs the quality of my life.

Absolutely. And listening to our bodies is super important. And that's like, it's just your body talking to you. When you have a rash on your skin, when you're bloating, when you have a headache, these are all just ways your body's trying to speak to you to let you know, Hey, Hey, you need to do something. You need to change something here. I didn't like that. Or that's not really working well for me. And so your body's constantly talking to you and giving you feedback. If we ignore it over time, we just say, well, bloating is normal. Acid reflux is normal. That's how it is. What happens is then we have this cascade effect. And, and then we get chronic illness because we didn't listen to our body in the beginning. So you're right. You know, something as small as like, oh, I'm bloated every single day. That's a, your sign of digestive dysfunction. And we need to sort that out so that you, you're not bloated Yeah. So that you're feeling really good all the time.

You weren't born with the bloating gene, you know, it can be addressed and, and you can feel a heck of a lot better. It's not like this curse you have to live with, so absolutely,

I'm sure you get this question a lot. Let me put it out there. The difference between a traditional primary care physician and a naturopath?

Absolutely. This is a, this is kind of key in, in understanding what what our practice does. So I'm a traditional holistic naturopath, which means that we use food, herbs and supplements in order to help your body get back to a state of homeostasis, which means that it is, it is able to thrive and also able to heal itself, because your body is a self-healing organism. You can heal, you cut yourself. What happens? You, you heal right. You heal in those areas. So your body is able to heal given the right circumstances. So the difference between a primary care physician and or like when you go to the emergency room, they're do they're practicing acute care. You know, if you broke your arm, don’t come to me for a broken arm. This is a, this is an excellent place for traditional what I call traditional Western medicine, because it's acute, it needs an immediate. All of those pharmaceuticals, those drugs and all of the things that they do in that setting are really, really amazing that they can do that, that they are able to help in acute and emergency situations. I work more in with chronic conditions and, and that's where there's a big gap in Western medicine. Western medicine is great for acute issues, you know, but they try to kind of a apply acute pharmaceutical drugs to a really a chronic condition. And a chronic condition has really come from what, from what we doing, our lifestyle, our diet, our mindset, what's going on with us in our household, so it's, it's looking at the whole person. And, and so that's where natural medicine and holistic naturopathy that's where that kind of fills in that gap of what's needed for chronic illnesses to help return the body. Like I said, back to a state of homeostasis where it can then go on and, and heal itself.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. I, I love it. . You know, rather than addressing the symptom in this day and age of, of modern medicine. I feel bad for many physicians because they really are on the clock. You know, when, when they spend time with you. They can only spend seven, eight minutes tops. I mean, I mean, it's like just about enough time to prescribe more medicine. Right. Which is the last thing that we need

You know? Exactly. And you know, that kind of brings up a good point, Charlie, in our practice, your first appointment with us is about an hour and a half. Mm that's a, that's a, that's a long time. People, people are always like, wow, that's a long time. Are we gonna use all that time?

We're not just gonna talk about what's happening to you today. We need to talk about what happened in the past you know, future goals for yourself. What are your goals for your health? What are goals for your life?

So that's why these first initial intakes they take a longer time because we still have to really sort of delve in and get to know each other. And and, and a lot of people kind of come to me at first and, and they expect, you know, well, you give mr a, a vitamin instead, can you give me a supplement? So we have to sort of change that mindset. There's no easy button. There's no, magic pill.

There's no magic. I don't have magic pills either. I don't have magic pots or herbs or anything like that in my, in my repertoire either. It's all about, you know, you taking your health into your own hands. We are giving you information, saying, here's all the information I can give you about inflammation and about this and about that. And, and then you take that and say, okay, well, I'm gonna make these changes in my life so that I can have a better quality of, so that I can, you know, go on and do more things. So I have that time to spend with my patients, the follow up appointment is then like another, about an hour to review protocols and the plan we have made. Here's the plan. Here's how we're gonna get there.

You know, in a traditional Western model, they have about seven to 10 minutes to spend with you. How much can they really learn about any traumas that you've had any previous history that you have in seven to 10 minutes is just not possible to get all of that information in. And you know, from friends of mine who have gone the traditional route on, they get, they get so few hours of nutritional education. Whereas most of my educational background was in the nutritional side of things.

Yeah. We, we are so lucky to have everything at our disposal.

What again, I love about what I'm hearing, you know, its, you're teaching, you know, your patients are leaving your office or your sessions with an understanding of, of, I think it's so important. Even, even if we're, we're, we're going to traditional route and getting medication, it'd be nice to know why we're taking this medication, how it works rather than, you know, just take this pill and, and better yet, what could I do to get off the meds? Right. You know, how could I change my lifestyle? And that's where it's, it's like the physicians are handcuffed because they don’t have the time to explain it all. And, and it takes time.

It does take time. It does take time. And, and I'm also, you know, more recently what's been great is that I've been starting to partner with the other physicians who don't have the time to spend doing that, to say, Hey, you know, I'm working with these patients on these thing. And if you could spend the time and they are committed to their lifestyle, that's kind of the first step. You have to have a commitment that right. I'm gonna make a change. And then, then it's great to partner with different doctors in the community to, to help their patients on that sort of journey say, okay, I'm ready. I'll, help you. And, and you take that information and go with it. My goal is for you not to need me. I tell my patients that from day one, I'm like, you don't need me. What you need is information. And once I give you the information, you come see me once a year, if you want for some follow up, but let's get you really, really healthy. And then, and then you won't need me anymore, which is the goal.

Love it. Love it. Well, how about this? I mean, let's give our listeners some more treats here. I how about some health tips that you probably have? You know, we could talk all day, but maybe share a tip or two what

So I wanted to share with you the principles of holistic nutrition, there three main principles to holistic nutrition and principle.

Number one is eliminating sources of inflammation. So when you think of inflammation, think inflammation, equal sign, chronic illness inflammation in the joints, inflammation in the brain, inflammation around the heart inflammation in the arteries, inflammation, inflammation equals chronic illness. So the first thing first principle of holistic nutrition is really to eliminate and remove any sort of inflammatory foods. Anything that is gonna be inflammatory for you. Anything that's going to cause a food, any food sensitivities that might be causing an reaction in the body. And so in our appointments, we get into like, what are those foods? What things do I really need to eliminate for me that are going to be inflammatory. But the first step is to like, let's remove anything that you're putting in your body.

The second thing is to introduce nutrition. Youhave these, you have, you have your, these, these cells in your body and they get full and they get inflamed. And so what we have to do is remove inflammation, stop adding more inflammation, and then also add in good nutrition for the cells so that they can do what they need to do. And so adding in the nutrition is gonna really help reduce inflammation as well. So your moving any obstacles to your success by removing the inflammation in step one, then you're adding in the great nutrition and this is different for different people. So not everybody is one size fits all. Some people can't really have cruciferous vegetables. Some people should stay away from the night shades. And so everybody is a little bit different.

But on the broad spectrum, adding in more food, that's alive, more food that is real. If it comes in a bag or in a box or from a pickup window, it probably has a lot of things that are not actually real foods that are preservatives that coat the cells of those foods and make it hard for your body to break down, causing bloating indigestion in nausea, upset stomach

I find that step one is more, is a little bit more difficult, but step two is actually actually pretty fun because you get to learn all new recipes and different ways to eat. And some people really take the bull by the horns and really like, love to learn

So and then step three is that the body must first cleanse before rebuilding. So if you think about, think about that drawer in your kitchen, that one that gets full of stuff, or that closet, you have that one closet in your house. That's like just full of junk. What do you have to do before? You can clean it? You have to take everything out. You have to clean, you have to cleanse before you can actually build anything. Before you can build any new, you know, cabinets or drawers in that space, you have to cleanse. And so part of the principles of holistic nutrition is cleansing and detoxing, the body detoxing, the liver and the gallbladder. And, and so that is an another sort of step in the process.

So we eliminate the inflammation we add in the good nutrition, and then we cleanse the body. And once you've done these things over a period of time, you are feeling good. Your energy's good. You're having regular bowel movements. You're not constipated. Your energy is consistent during the day. What most people say is I'm sleeping so good. I can't believe sleeping. That's a common common, you know, side effect, I guess, a good side effect and upside that they didn't expect. And so a lot of, a lot of my patients that come for one thing and then they realize, oh, wow, I, I didn't come to you for this pain in my joints when I wake up in the morning, but it's gone. I didn't come to you because I was having these headaches, but now they are gone too. And so once you start working on, on adding in the nutrition, the body just starts to heal itself all over systemically. So those are my three sort of steps and principles of holistic nutrition that I wanted to share. And I'll share more more tips, more health of tips on, on future podcasts.