Meet Heather
Hi! I'm Heather...
Growing up as a young girl, my role model was my mother. She loved to go jogging, and she bought me my first pair of running shoes when I was ten. I always admired her dedication, and to this day, she is still out pounding the pavement at 4 a.m. every morning!
I have always remained active by running, going to the gym, even competing in some bodybuilding competitions. In 2004, shortly after running a marathon, I became debilitated by chronic pain. This led to a subsequent unsuccessful surgery and no answers. In my search for answers I found that Conventional Medicine was very limited in its ability to get me well. In 2011 I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and in 2015 I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease. It took me that long to get some kind of answer. Unfortunately this is all too common. But diagnoses' never get anyone well. They simply provide a name. They don't provide answers or a direction to get someone well. What I found through my own personal journey is that we are all bio-individuals and what we each uniquely need will vary widely. I have also learned that ANYONE can get well if we just get to the root causes as to why there is imbalance in their body.
My own personal journey toward optimal wellness led me to seek out training to help people get well themselves. It became my passion to educate people to become their own advocates and to not settle for less than they answer they deserved. Early on I became certified through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and, while I loved it, I found the schooling there to be very limited in it's scope for the complex population I wanted to help. Telling my clients to eat more kale and drink more water was only going to get them so far. While these are all great suggestions for the vast majority of people, I yearned for more knowledge to help my clients. Since my diagnosis, I was always very interested in Functional Medicine and had been to a few practitioners myself. However, what I found through my own journey, was that you went to your Functional Doctor every few months and were left with a basket of things to do with no idea how to implement them and lacking the support to do the same. In fact, my first appointment with a Functional provider resulting in me doing nothing because I was so overwhelmed, confused and lacking direction.
Continued Below....
Institute for Integrative Nutrition
My Training
So what is my training beyond IIN? I was awarded my Doctor of Traditional Naturopathy, receiving my degree from New Eden School of Natural Health & Herbal Studies, and I have extensive training and certification through The School of Applied Functional Medicine. My focus and training is on specifically spotting the interconnectedness happening in your unique body. I have also completed extensive training in HTMA (hair tissue mineral analysis), completing certification courses through Dr. Rick Malter and Rick Fischer and have completed certification courses in Foot Glyphology.
The body is designed to feel fantastic! And when it doesn't that is clear evidence of dysfunction in the body. We are not meant to feel exhausted and in pain. Helping people reach optimal wellness is truly my passion. Some of my specialties include hormone dysfunction, thyroid dysfunction, eczema, psoriasis, chronic headaches, allergies, diabetes, auto immune dynamics, chronic Lyme, IBS, CFS, adrenal fatigue, migraines, sleep issues, Fibromyalgia etc. Basically if you don't feel well I can help you. All systems and symptoms ARE connected. It just takes a trained practitioner to help you put those puzzle pieces together so that you CAN feel fantastic!
My Approach
I have always been brutally honest about how I feel about conventional medicine. I don't dislike it. It serves a very real purpose, for triage. Medications are life saving and I am so grateful that we have them. However, conventional healthcare is not wellness promoting. Practitioners in the conventional setting are simply not trained to help people get to the root causes of why they have dysfunction in the body. This does not make them bad practitioners. It simply makes them trained in what they are trained in, the symptom management, bandaid model. So many people are simply handed a pharmaceutical or given a referral to a therapist or other specialist and, while these interventions can serve a very real purpose, that never served me to reach optimal wellness and I have not experienced that it has in my client population.
The vast majority of people are not being optimally supported and served by the conventional medicine lens. They can't be, because the conventional lens does not fundamentally and intrinsically honor the interconnectedness between body systems and symptoms. Many of my clients come to me having exhausted conventional medicine and they are seeking another way. Many of them have lost hope that they will ever feel their best again. I have been in that place and to help them realize how powerful they are in their own healing journey is truly a blessing to me.
Today, my toolbox is so very full! I partner with a variety of dispensaries for supplements and many lab companies to provide my clients with a wide variety of options at a discount. I am not a practitioner that uses a cookie cutter approach and lifestyle changes often have much more impact than any supplement ever will. My question is always, "who is this person?" Every one of my clients programs are specialized and unique, because so are they.
I'd love to have you join me in the journey toward optimal wellness. If you'd like to work with me please book a Discovery Session and fill out the application to work with me. I look forward to hearing from you.
