My Story
I am a registered dietitian-nutritionist with over 20 years experience helping women and children in clinics, hospitals and my own private practice.
But my master’s in nutrition did not include the integrative, functional approach I follow today. Back then we were not trained to seek out the underlying causes of symptoms or to fully explore patients’ lives in all their complexity. At the beginning of my career, I practiced as I was taught. “High blood pressure? Here’s your low sodium diet.” I never thought to ask a patient: “What is going on in your life? What is potentially toxic in your environment? How do you manage stress? What is your pain telling you?" It was my own personal journey through health crises and conditions that led me to this radically new approach.
In my life I have never sought the easy fix. Even as a young adult, I would seek out alternative care in addition to conventional care.
When I suffered from bulging disks post-partum, I went to a chiropractor, had rolfing sessions, and began doing yoga. When I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in 2015, I researched, then followed, a gluten-free diet which evolved into a vegan, gluten-free diet — sending my RA into a remission that has lasted to this day. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, also in 2015, I took a similar approach. My spiritual journey started around this time. Was the grief from the loss of my father the year prior manifesting as cancer AND an auto-immune disease? Why had the same thing happened to a patient I met, who developed prostate cancer and lupus after losing his father?
But the most significant medical issue that brought me the greatest insights and fueled my spiritual journey, would be my migraine-like headaches.
This pain brought me first to reiki and acupuncture which were helpful in the short-term. My next stop was John Sarno’s TMS (tension myositis syndrome) theory which led to psychotherapy sessions. The TMS idea was that my mind was creating the pain to deflect from that which I could not handle. TMS really helped. As did Donna Eden’s energy medicine, which posits that if you fix the energetic imbalance, you fix the problem. Now I was getting somewhere. Next stop was Dr. Joe Dispenza and meditating with intention to change my life, my actual DNA. Mind-blowing. And it worked.
Best of all, I moved from Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley. Nature. Relaxation. Slowing down. I still get the occasional pain, but I have made peace with it. I listen to it. And often, we go our separate ways, knowing we’ll likely meet again during periods of stress, exhaustion, hunger, or planetary shifts.
All this wealth of experience has brought me to a great place.
Nothing gives me more joy than helping others with functional nutrition.