Hey, I'm Dasha,

I'm a hospital internist passionate about empowering people to make lifestyle changes that will help them to feel better and reduce the need for chronic medications. 

Seeing patient after patient with a page long list of chronic conditions and various inflammatory diseases (vasculitis, glomerulonephritis just to name a few), I wanted to look more upstream to see why are we getting so inflamed and sick and what can we do about it!?

This has led to nutritional courses, exploring different non Western modalities of healing, my own ongoing lifestyle changes, coaching certification, coupled with my ongoing interest in what Western medicine has to offer. 

Western medicine offers some really valuable therapies, but as we all know, it doesn’t hold all the answers. We are much more complex and in isolation it falls short most of the time. Getting to a better well being is so much more than just nutritional advice - it is radically looking at our life and taking ownership of our choices, it is taking an honest inventory of our physical and emotional well being, it is how we move, how we eat, how we interact with the people around us, how we sleep and how we cope with the inevitable challenges of life. 

Being an internist, "evidence based medicine" was a mantra that was ingrained into us as trainees, but there are so many other things outside of traditional western practices that can infuse magic for people. I try to listen carefully when I hear what has worked for people around me. We don’t need to wait for a randomized controlled study to know what makes you feel good and what doesn’t. 

“What happens in the body reflects what is happening in the mind and the spirit. People can get well. But before a person can do so, he or she must often undergo a transformation - of lifestyle, emotions and spirit - besides making a necessary shifts in the physical body”
Dr Lewis Mehl-Madrona

Of course, you can do everything “perfectly” and still get sick. After all we are just small specks in this universe. 

As I continue to learn about more integrative tools to help ourselves preserve or get back our vitality, using food as medicine, taking care of our mental health and learning to really listen to our bodies and thoughts, whether you are dealing with a difficult diagnosis already or just want to improve how you feel in your body and mind, I am delighted to share some tips and tools here.