My journey into the health field has been both exciting and fun. I have always been interested in organic foods, organic gardening and staying physically fit. I have been blessed with excellent health throughout my life. I attribute that with being physically active during my youth with outdoor pursuits such as horseback riding. I rode horses for over thirty years until I decided the horse was getting more exercise than me and I changed my sport to cycling. I was the oldest of six kids and enjoyed hanging out with my Dad who was mostly outside gardening and taking care of all of our pets.
My undergraduate degree was in Business Administration. I managed a health food store for over fifteen years learning all about the healthy organic foods, supplements, herbal and homeopathic remedies. I created a loyal customer base because of my personal knowledge and experience in alternative remedies and natural health programs. But I was recommending these products not really knowing the medical background of my customers or if they were on any prescription drugs that may have contraindications with a natural or herbal product.
I decided to professionally pursue wholistic health counseling. I wanted to be able to sit down with a person and find our about their health history, medication and supplements that they may be taking, and all about them as a whole person; physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I wanted to learn Prevention of dis-ease and the Cause for health imbalances rather than treating the Effects.
I became a Certified Natural Health Practitioner, a Certified Nutritional Counselor, and a Board Certified Traditional Naturopath through Trinity College of Natural Health. I am Board Certified through the American Naturopathic Medical Certification and Accreditation Board. I have a private practice at a Waldorf based school in Sperryville, VA.
Some additional pursuits of study/classes (required ceu’s) were Balancing Women’s Hormones, Traditional Chinese Medicine, “What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Hormones,” Biochemical Blood Chemistry Evaluation, Kinesiology, and Enzyme Therapy with Stephen Horne, Herbalist AHG, Dr. Kimberly Balas, ND, Dr. K.P. Khalsa, ND, and Dr. Dennis Frerking, DC (assist to Dr. H. Loomis), Bio-dynamic Cranial-Sacral Bodywork and Source Energy Medicine.
Over the past thirteen years of counseling I have realized that the most important foundation to optimal health is diet. I have always counseled my clients by telling them to eat as close to nature as possible rather than teaching a complex nutritional course. I am witnessing more people with Cancer, Cardiovascular disease and Diabetes than ever before, even with all our medical advances. I truly believe that our Standard American Diet (SAD) is creating more sickness in our society than ever.
I have personally tried every diet created by man or woman. I will only eat organic food including my chocolate. I would eat organic chicken or wild salmon on occasion. Mostly, my diet was plant based, both raw and cooked.Recently, I was experiencing some health challenges such as low energy, cravings, insatiable hunger, and joint pain. After just two days on my raw food smoothie, I became symptom free. My body was just too acidic. I researched raw food diets and tried it for a year. Lost a lot of weight ( I wasn’t trying to loose weight), and felt energized, but I started to really miss hot food and my basic beans and rice.
Now I have incorporated a lot of the raw food practices but also eat a variety of cooked healthy organic foods.