Bio & Credentials

 If you'd told 13-year-old me that one day I'd dedicate my life to helping people uncover the root causes of chronic illness, I probably would've laughed.

At 13, I wasn't thinking about functional medicine. I was just trying to make it through the school day without running to the bathroom. I ended up homeschooling.

For six months, I had diarrhea...up to 20 times a day.

My parents took me everywhere. Colonoscopies. Endoscopies. Specialists. More appointments than I could count. Every test came back "normal." Every answer sounded the same.

"It's IBS."

Even then, something about that answer never sat right with me. Not because I needed a different diagnosis. Because I wanted to know why.

I wish I could tell you I found functional medicine at 13 and everything was perfect after that.

I didn't. 

I got better. I grew up. I went to pharmacy school because I loved science and I loved helping people. But I was never the pharmacist who was satisfied with, "Take this and call me if it doesn't work." I wanted to know why.

Why was someone deficient in three different nutrients?

Why did a medication fix one symptom but create three new ones?

Why were we so quick to label someone with IBS instead of asking what caused it in the first place?

After earning my Doctor of Pharmacy, I had the privilege of managing one of the country's premier independent integrative pharmacies. Every day, I compounded bioidentical hormones, ran advanced laboratory testing, talked about nutrition, and root-cause approaches long before functional medicine became widely recognized.

I helped build a Drug-Induced Nutrient Depletion Database because I couldn't stop asking what medications were taking away from the body, not just what they were doing for it. I spoke around the country on drug-induced nutrient depletion and HIV care, worked with incredibly complex patients, and eventually led our pharmacy team through the uncertainty of COVID while pregnant with my son.

I genuinely thought I had found exactly what I was meant to do.

Then life humbled me...

After my son was born, I developed HELLP syndrome: a life-threatening pregnancy complication that landed me in the ICU.

I survived.

But I never really recovered (ok, I hate to spoil the story, but I am now recovered).

Despite exercising every day, I gained nearly 65 pounds. Weight loss resistance. My heart raced constantly. My hair was falling out. Random rashes. Migraines. Anxiety crept into places it had never been before, and the exhaustion is still hard to describe. I remember putting my four-month-old safely on the floor, setting a timer for ten minutes, and hoping I could get enough sleep to make it until his next nap. 

At the same time, we had moved because of the military (my husband is 13 years into his career for the US Air Force!). I had left the career I loved because there weren't pharmacy jobs where we landed. I was a new mom, carrying over $250,000 in student loans, that just had a near death experience, wondering why my body no longer felt like mine.

Here's the humbling part.

I knew a lot.

I knew how to read labs.

I understood medications.

I knew nutrition.

And I still became the patient no one could figure out.

I did what most of my clients have already done before they find me.

I kept making appointments.

OB-GYN.

Primary care.

Cardiology.

Endocrinology.

Gastroenterology.

Dermatology.

Chiropractic.

Acupuncture.

Whole30.

Fasting.

Fitness programs.

Weight-loss shakes.

All the things.

Every time I thought...

"This has to be it."

It wasn't.

After more than ten practitioners, I was exhausted. Not just physically, but emotionally.

I was standing at a crossroads. Accept that this was just my new normal...Or keep searching.

I chose to keep searching. Not because I wanted another certification and I promise, I really didn't go back to school, but because I wanted answers, and I knew I deserved answers.

I enrolled in the School of Applied Functional Medicine and immersed myself completely. Every lecture, every research paper, every case study, I turned around and applied it to my own body.

Over the next six months, things started changing.

My weight began coming down.

My tachycardia resolved.

My anxiety improved.

My energy came back.

Even the thirteen food sensitivities I'd developed completely disappeared.

For the first time in years...I felt like myself again!

Oh, and my son? Eczema gone.

Yet, healing us wasn't the end of the story. It is exactly what made me hungry; hungry to learn more. From the moment I started to learn about functional medicine, I knew I didn't want to be another practitioner with a certification on the wall and a protocol for every diagnosis.

I wanted to understand the body so deeply that when someone walked into my (virtual) office after seeing twelve other providers, we could finally make sense of their story.

So, I kept learning.

And I still do.

More than 1,500 hours of advanced functional medicine education later, I continue studying daily because our understanding of the human body is always evolving and I believe my patients deserve a practitioner who evolves with it.

Today, I'm honored to serve clients across the United States and internationally. I've been recognized as one of the Top 50 Innovators in Pharmacy, spoken on stages across the country, written for Drug Topics magazine, authored educational resources, and had the privilege of helping thousands of people reconnect with their health.

But none of those things are what I'm most proud of. The moments I am most proud of is when a client, who I now know on such a profound level after months or years of working so closely, looks at me with tear filled eyes in our last closing moments of our final session, and the only words they can muster are "Thank you". Because how can you even begin to describe the momentous feeling of getting your life back? 

That's why The Rooted Farmacy exists.

We don't just look over lab results and connect the pieces of your puzzle. We dig in, connect, and understand. We will quite literally cry together, we will laugh together, and we build you up together. We listen carefully, connect the dots others have missed, and walk beside you until your story starts to make sense again.

If you're here, wondering if anyone will ever figure out what's going on...

I want you to know something: You're not asking for too much.

You don't have to have it all figured out.

You just have to decide that you're done settling for "fine."

The rest...

We can figure out together.