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. I thought they were too restrictive and the regulations stopped them from really being able to fully heal the whole person (nutrition is only one part of health) and alth
ough I did now know what was missing, I knew something was. 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 at the difference, not in how different the 2 positions were but how different they were from their patients' health recovery perspectives. At the TCM clinic people were overjoyed with how much they had recovered, how they were arthritis free since for 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, what was this TCM and how was it healing so many people? I felt like a curtain was lifted and my life would never be the same again. This was it, this was the missing piece I had been searching for! I was finally seeing something that could heal the whole person, not just their symptoms. 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 my dry patches of skin, the psoriasis 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! I knew I had to learn more and once I heard of at 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 then 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.
