When I first graduated from my Nutrition degree out of University, I wasn’t really sure where I was headed. I knew I was passionate about nutrition and health but I wasn’t sure a nutritionist or dietitian was what I wanted to be. At the time, I wasn't convinced that becoming a dietitian was the right fit for me. I loved nutrition and understood how powerful it could be, but I felt health was about
so much more than food alone. I wanted to understand the whole person and all the factors that influence health. Even though I couldn't fully explain it at the time, I had a feeling there was an important piece of the puzzle I hadn't discovered yet. I ended up finding a part time job working at a hospital as a clinical dietetic assistant and at the same time started a job as a nutritionist at a Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) Clinic. At that time, I had no idea what TCM was or knew anything about this whole ‘naturopathic’ world out there but I was a nutritionist and wanted to try my hands somewhere. I was excited to get a chance to see both options, working with a dietitian and as a nutritionist I could assess which avenue I wanted to pursue. Once I started, I was amazed, not by how different the two positions were, but by the vastly different health outcomes I was seeing in the patients. At the TCM clinic people were overjoyed with how much they had recovered, how they were arthritis free for over 10 years, 15 years since they were diagnosed as cancer free, cardiovascular diseases had reversed, a wall of pictures of babies from women labeled infertile by western medicine standards and tons of patients telling me just how lucky I was to get to work in such a healing center. I was amazed and baffled at the same time, what was going on here? I felt like a curtain was lifted and my life would never be the same again. This was my turning point. This was it, this was the missing piece I had been searching for all along. I started paying closer attention to what was happening at the clinic and how these remarkable improvements were occurring. For the first time, I was seeing an approach that looked beyond symptoms and focused on supporting the whole person. It felt like I had discovered an entirely new world of healthcare. I started adopting some of the new dietary, herbal and lifestyle changes that I was learning and I started healing myself. Things that I never thought could go away like the eczema on my skin, the dry patches that was starting to form on my face went away, my constant bloating and my lifelong struggle with constipation started reversing. I could think better, I had more energy and I just felt so much better overall. I knew I had to learn more and once I heard of the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and that I could learn not only about TCM but also about herbs, functional medicine, nutraceuticals, homeopathy and energy medicine, I knew I had to do it. I knew it would allow me to be able to complete my learning and give me the ability to teach others what I had learned, to show people that there is another way! We can all fine tune our health and even though I had thought I was healthy before I started working at the TCM clinic, I know now I could have felt so much better, I just needed to add in some naturopathic touches. Today, that same philosophy guides everything I do. Because I believe people deserve more than being told that everything looks normal. I believe there is almost always a reason why someone feels tired, bloated, foggy, inflamed, or unlike themselves. And most importantly, I believe that health can be improved when we start looking for the root causes.
