Welcome! As a Functional Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner and Patient Advocate, I help people feeling overwhelmed, confused or stuck with health problems find clarity and get real results. I’ve got your back even if you feel like you’ve tried everything, and I get what you’re going through, because boy have I been there.
You may struggle with energy, digestion, weight and anxiety, or have progressed to conditions like autoimmune, diabetes and heart disease. I am also experienced with toxic mold, Lyme and a wide range of chronic complex conditions.
We work together with the intelligence of nature to untangle the root causes of illness, over 90% of which are lifestyle. My Inner Genius Health 3D System helps you navigate
- Custom lifestyle optimization
- Medical decision-making
- Any mental, emotional or logistical obstacles in your path.
And the best part is that I will help you find pleasure in your process so you enjoy the lasting changes needed to truly heal. This way health struggles are not an end to well-being. They can become a doorway to personal growth and new possibility where you get healthy living a life you love and have longed for, even if, until now, it has felt out of reach.
PS: Don’t worry about where you live. I work long distance!
My Personal Story
In 2006, I received my PhD from UC Berkeley where, as a Jacob K. Javits fellow, I participated in a joint program with UC San Francisco Medical School. The path of my career changed course after I helped my mom overcome Crohn’s disease. She was able to stop immunosuppressant drugs, save her colon (which doctors said was impossible) and has been in remission since 2004. She has also lost 100 pounds, ditched psoriasis (to her dermatologist’s shock), cleared arterial plaque, healed from deep trauma and so much more.
My personal healing journey has played an equally profound role. I lost 50 pounds without “dieting” and have kept it off into middle age as well as have reversed a wide range of health struggles. These include digestive disorders, toxic mold, chronic pain and fatigue, debilitating anxiety, complex trauma and more. This is why I can deeply empathize with clients. I truly get what it’s like to struggle with your health, feel overwhelmed, worry you’ve tried everything and fear that it won’t ever get better. I’ve never been so happy to be wrong! In fact, my life, while it’s has its bumps, has just gotten better and better since I have fallen in love with the tools and strategies I share with clients.
Health is a delicate balance of nature’s symphony of mind, body and spirit. I will be forever inspired by the profound life changes my mom and clients have made at all ages to overcome limiting beliefs and defy the odds. It is never too early or too late to be and feel healthy.
What is Inner Genius Health?
Early on, I realized we are so sick and unhappy, because we are living, and even treating disease, in ways that work against our evolutionary biology. Thus, we fail to meet basic human needs, leading to epidemic levels of weakened immunity and chronic illness, both mental and physical. When we try to cover up symptoms without addressing the underlying causes, we continue to deteriorate. Similarly, if your house is on fire and you just take the alarm battery out, your house will burn down.
Research shows that over 90% of illness is rooted in our lifestyles. This is why most healing doesn’t happen in an office or hospital. It happens in our most extraordinary ordinary moments. It starts in your mind and heart and pours over into the rest of your life. Healing happens in stores and markets, in your kitchen and on your plate, in your bed, on your yoga mat, outdoors among trees, on the earth, in water and in sunlight. It takes place in your daily movements, in your relationships, in your communities, on this earth and in each and every breath. It is all intricately and intimately connected.
In my personal and professional experience, I have learned that in order to heal, we must shift our perceptual lens to better understand, deeply respect and work with, not against, the infinite intelligence of nature. This same intelligence resides in our cells, DNA and atoms as well as our consciousness. All of existance is intimately, intricately and quite literally interconnected.
There is a lot of complex science telling us what traditional wisdom has known all along:
Nature is genius. The good news is that we are nature, and when we unlock our inner genius, we can heal from cell to soul.
What is Functional Lifestyle Medicine?
It is Functional Medicine meets Lifestyle Medicine. It means making delightful upgrades to your lifestyle to address the root causes of illness so you can restore the biological functions that make you feel vibrant and enjoy a sense of well-being.
What is Lifestyle Medicine?
This holistic, integrative approach to healing is based on the fact that over 90% of chronic illness is caused by lifestyle, meaning an accumulation of daily habits, traumas and environmental exposures that shape our biology, including our mental health. For people who want to heal, Lifestyle Medicine is an absolutely necessary adjunct to clinical care.
What is Functional Medicine?
It is both a movement and an organization of scientists and health practitioners that are dedicated to…
- Address the root causes of health issues to restore functionality to body systems. Why? When we just cover up symptoms, it allows continued deterioration and can often cause side effects that appear to alleviate one set of problem, yet create others.
- Treat the whole person, as our mind, emotions, body and spirit are inseparable
- Cultivate a collaborative, nurturing dynamic with you in the driver’s seat (instead of top-down authority or treating you like you are crazy)
- Respect patient sovereignty (it’s your body and you are the boss of you)
- Respectful collaboration with other health professionals, which includes honoring the undeniable strengths of conventional medicine, like acute trauma, many diagnostic technologies, life-saving surgeries and so many really good, hard-working people.
- Side-step medical politics to the extent possible and put patient well-being ahead of corporate profit motives. (It’s not just patients. Caring, open-minded doctors and other health practitioners struggle with this, too.)
- Interdisciplinary, evidence-based strategies that encourage cutting-edge innovation. Instead of a politicized, competitive and narrow approach to knowledge, it’s more beneficial to play nicely in the sandbox with others. This way we can learn from and help each other.
- Safer, more effective results
“The most innovative solutions honor the interconnectedness of nature – as above, so below.
It is crucial to me that we explore the big big picture of nature, ourselves as an extension of nature and how everything and everyone is connected. This includes looking at the long-term implications of our choices. I am a huge nerd, super curious about the world and existence, so I read and research a lot. By implementing a highly interdisciplinary perspective, we can we get a more complete picture and can craft highly innovative strategies that are more effective than just masking symtoms.
In my work, I draw from:
- Biological sciences
- Conventional medicine
- Integrative medicine
- Traditional medicine
- Physics
- Environmental science
- Agriculture
- Psychology, including somatics, neuroplasticity and behavior change
- Multi-cultural traditional wisdom, including spirituality
- An array of social sciences, including medical anthropology
Clients and I work together to create powerful strategies that help you regain your health using a unique Inner Genius Health 3D System that I developed. My evidence-based approach merges the best of cutting edge science research, traditional wisdom, my personal healing journey and professional experience.
Awww, I feel touched that you read this far. Here’s a guided meditation gift! It’s one of my favorite brain tricks to help physical and emotional pain as well as is a fabulous way to get a natural high that is simultaneously grounding, expansive and brings you into clarity.