About

What would make a per­son become a natur­o­pathic doctor?

My path to becom­ing a Naturopathic Doctor in Oakville, Ontario began with a escal­at­ing case of eczema (atopic dermatitis).

1. Severe eczema (atopic dermatitis) from 12 – late 20’s
2. An inab­il­ity to sleep due to con­stant scratching
3. Concerns about the con­stant use of cortisone, pred­nisone, and Protopic without alle­vi­at­ing the symp­toms longer than sev­eral hours
4. A desire to learn and change the tra­ject­ory of my health so that I could have a “nor­mal” life

What did I learn?

I star­ted explor­ing my internal health as the cause of my skin irrit­a­tion. When I had my wis­dom teeth removed mid-​university and could not eat many solid foods for sev­eral days, my eczema began to clear and I felt less inflamed. When I star­ted eat­ing again, I ate oat­meal and pasta, and began to itch within 30 minutes.
I real­ized that my inflam­ma­tion was very much con­nec­ted to my gastrointest­inal tract and com­pletely elim­in­ated wheat glu­ten. It was the tip of the ice­berg or so to speak, and I decided to delve deeper.

In my mas­ters degree at the time, I decided to change dir­ec­tion from becom­ing a der­ma­to­lo­gist in con­ven­tional medi­cine and pur­sued natur­o­pathic medi­cine. At the end of natur­o­pathic med­ical school, my eczema was 95% gone.

Special Interests

Obviously, the skin and gastrointest­inal tract and their unique rela­tion­ship they may have in cer­tain indi­vidu­als has been a pas­sion. However, my back­ground in psy­cho­logy and neur­os­cience is a lifelong pas­sion in explor­ing the very import­ant role of the body and mind’s rela­tion­ship on phys­ical health is a sig­ni­fic­ant part of my prac­tice. As a woman, I always endeav­our to improve women’s health and life­style overall.

Education

Bachelor of Science; Major Psychology, Minor Biology

1998 – 2002 McMaster University, Hamilton ON

Masters of Science; Specialty in Behavioural Neurosciences

2002 – 2004 McMaster University, Hamilton ON

Thesis: Rodent Models of Lupus-​like Disease and their affect on social bond­ing hor­mones oxy­to­cin and vasopressin.

Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine

2005 – 2008 (Accelerated 3-​year pro­gram), Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Toronto ON

Additional Training

Auricular Medicine — Certified May 2012

Mindfulness Meditation Certification through the University of Toronto — in Process

Statement of Intent

I do not pre­tend to know everything there is to know about medi­cine. That is why a prac­tice is called a prac­tice, and there is an art to con­tinu­ally learn­ing and expand­ing one’s know­ledge daily. I do how­ever try to facil­it­ate health in my patients to the best of my expand­ing know­ledge, at the rate in which they are ready.

I hope that this web­site can help you the reader to expand upon your know­ledge of health and medi­cine ( con­ven­tional or altern­at­ive ) and gen­er­ate some dis­cus­sion. Often I can­not explore all of the inter­est­ing ideas about health while I’m in prac­tice, and look for­ward to dis­cuss­ing them in this forum with you.