I often get asked “why I became an Naturopathic Doctor”, so here’s my answer.
I had a few different influences that led me to this path. One major influence was my personal experience with naturopathic medicine. As a child I had lots of allergies and would break out in rashes to almost anything from foods to things in the environment. I pretty much figured it was something I just had to learn to live with. When I was about 13 years old a wise family friend told my parents that they should try taking me to see a Naturopathic Doctor. And luckily for me, my parents did. I saw a Naturopathic Doctor in Toronto, followed his treatment plan which was to change a few things in my diet and take some supplements. To everyone’s amazement my allergies completely cleared up. To me it was “magic”, I never realized that there were legitimate schools you could go to in order to learn how to make these kinds of changes in people’s health.
As I went through my school, I always found the human body, health and sciences very interesting. I took Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo. I volunteered at hospitals, worked in medical doctor’s offices, did medical research and wrote articles in scientific journals.I was really gearing up to apply to conventional medical school. But the more time I spent in this environment, I wasn’t really seeing people getting better and experiencing any revolutionary changes in their health.
While in university, I decided to spend some time at a naturopathic clinic. I would ask the patients that I encountered what their story was. I was amazed to find that every single one of them had a success story. I was intrigued and motivated to have this kind of effect on people’s lives.
I then did research into the naturopathic colleges and found that there are accredited, legitimate medical schools, but there was only 6 accredited naturopathic schools in North America. I applied to the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto, which at the time was the only accredited naturopathic college in Canada. I got accepted into the program and you could say that the rest is history…
When I was in second year of naturopathic college my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I started doing a ton of research into natural cancer treatments. It is actually quite astonishing to find that there have been some well researched, effective cancer cures that have been published in the conventional scientific medical journals, yet virtually ignored by conventional medicine.
Unfortunately, my dad died at the young age of 54 after nine short months of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
This is what started my on-going research into effective natural cancer therapies. I started speaking with researchers and health care practitioners, traveling around the world to attend conferences and go to spend time with doctors who were having success treating cancer and finding out what exactly they were doing. Over the years, I’ve accumulated great amounts of knowledge in the area of natural cancer therapies from a number of great leaders in medicine.
I came across an approach to medicine called Biological Medicine. This is an approach that looks at the body’s internal terrain; the cells need a healthy terrain in order for us to be healthy. We need to address root causes of health issues. We need to look at root stressors on the body that are not allowing the body to function at its best. We look at the regulation of the body, the regulation in every cell of the body and the body’s ability to heal itself and getting these regulatory systems working better in the body. This approach really resonated well with my understanding of naturopathic medicine and science and how the body works. And that there were tests used to look at the body’s terrain, regulation of the different organs of the body and the stressors on the body that might not be allowing it to function at its best.
This is the basis of why I founded Advanced Naturopathic Medical Centre, with the plan to bring Biological Medicine to Canada. To have all the testing and therapies available at this clinic and help the body to function better. To provide patients with a truly individualized approach.
This is how I evolved from becoming a Naturopathic Doctor to the kind of practice that we offer here at Advanced Naturopathic Medical Centre.
I will continue to further my knowledge and remain on the forefront of medicine to be able to offer my patients the highest quality of services and the best therapies.
