My wellness journey began in 2003 when a growing curiosity in food as medicine led me to The Institute of Integrative Nutrition in NYC. I had always had an affinity for eating, and a concerning “addiction” to sweets and baked goods. I also had a myriad of chronic health nuisances like eczema, acne-prone skin, and life long sinus congestion and allergies.
While at IIN, a theme seemed to emerge around dairy and whether or not we needed 3 servings a day like TV commercials insisted. The word “mucogenic” was used frequently by a few of our teachers, and one day I had a light bulb thought: I have too much mucuous (I would keep a giant wad of toilet paper by my spot at the barre in ballet class, tissues in every pocket, blow my nose through conversations and first dates- I was a mess.) One day, like a sign from the universe, I walked into a deli and ordered a bagel and asked for the vegan cream cheese for the first time ever. From that day on, I stopped eating dairy products. Now, I don’t really love all the highly processed non-dairy alternatives out there, but back then there weren’t all that many, so mostly I just didn’t eat any dairy products, real or fake. And what happened was nothing short of miraculous. My nose dried up. My spring allergies (6 months into the experiment) were non-existent. I wasn’t even allergic to cats anymore. In fact, to this day, I have never taken another OTC allergy medicine.
WHAT?! I know. It does sound too good to be true, but it happened to me. I was floored by what changed with just one single change in my diet. To be clear, I do not think dairy products are universally bad, unhealthy, etc. It’s just an illustration of how much we are impacted by the things we eat. And everyone is different.
A few years after this stunning revelation, I was struggling through another health issue: eczema. This had popped up during college on my fingers. I thought it was the rings I used to wear, so I stopped wearing them. But my early 20’s were pretty stressful. I graduated college not knowing what to do with my life, I had no lucrative job prospects, my first true love dumped me, you know…that life stuff. And with stress, you get really fun physical manifestations and mine was eczema. But this eczema got so bad that I was sleeping with my hands wrapped in toilet paper before a dermatologist diagnosed it with the phrase “it just happens” and gave me a steroid prescription.
“It just happens?” That made me mad. A pot of water doesn’t spontaneously boil. It has to go from warm to hot to really hot first. And given my previous experiment with dairy and my nose, I figured there had to be a route towards healing my skin from the inside out. And that’s when I started to go down the rabbit hole with gut health and functional medicine. I had to unfortunately take a strong antibiotic around this time for a case of strep throat, and by the end of that prescription I began getting hives on my legs, and then hives on the thin skin around my eyes. It was truly debilitating. I began to pay attention to the foods I was eating, as it seemed there was an allergenic type reaction happening. It was hit and miss. But one day, I found the study I needed. A paper from the University of Texas Medical Center describing dermatitis herpetiformis, or celiac disease of the skin. And the paper was specifically about iodine being a trigger for the manifestation. That was it. I had already thought my hives might be a seafood allergy, as the eye episodes had sometimes occured on a sushi night. But not EVERY time I ate sushi, so I was confused. But I did realize that the sushi only seemed to affect me if I had bread that day, too. And on brief episodes of being gluten-free (I’d tried and failed several times), the shellfish didn’t cause a reaction.
I set aside the gluten that next day and never had my eyes swell up again. I did employ some classic functional medicine gut healing protocols along the way and in general clean up my diet dramatically (less sugar and starches, way more vegetables) and have been so, so grateful for the ability to manage my chronic health complaints through food.
I’m now certified not only from IIN, but through the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, developed in partnership with the Institute of Functional Medicine, and I’m also nationally board certified through the National Board of Health & Wellness Coaches.
In addition to my health coach training, I was am forever a dancer, having graduated from the pre-professional program and life long training I received at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School. From there I went on to Tisch School of the Arts at NYU where I received my bachelor’s in dance.
As dancers need many other jobs to stay afloat, I also began teaching fitness classes and received an Associate’s in Occupational Therapy at the Swedish Institute:College of Health Sciences where I completed a 2 year training to become a licensed massage therapist.
I’m a confident LMT with many modalities, but most notably employ mayofascial release, craniosacral therapy, and several clinical styles to help ease clients out of pain. I’m certified in Group Fitness from ACE and teach locally.
In my free time, I sing, dance, yoga, and am a mom to two sons. I still love good cooking, and good eating, I just want to help you do it in the best way to suppport your health goals!