Speaker 1: Welcome back. These days more people are turning to holistic medicine. It’s a practice that considers the whole person, body, mind, spirit, and emotions. Dr. Erica Steele from Holistic Family Practice in Virginia Beach is here to tell us more. Welcome to Coast Live.
Speaker 2: Hi. Thank you for having.
Speaker 1: So I’m really interested in this. I love the whole person, the whole body approach to everything. And so, how do you do this? First of all, what is a naturopathic doctor? Explain how you study and how you help people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we go through similar undergrad and doctoral training. So it’s a lot of education, but we must be trained to identify, diagnose, and manage diseases.
That’s what an allopathic doctor does. We look for all of the imbalances in the person’s health. And we’re also treating the person, not just their disease process, nutrition, nutrient deficiencies, food, or whatnot. That’s all included, but we’re working with the individual and what the individual needs.
Speaker 1: Interesting. So when you say balance, how do you figure out how to get somebody in balance? Because I know you said you treat the mind and the body. Does all of this go together?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So let’s shift some of the conversation. Yeah. So I’m not treating. Okay. I’m supporting you and holding that space for you to heal yourself.
Okay? So meaning that I’m, you’re not gonna come in, and then I say, you say, Oh, okay. I have this problem here. Here’s how to fix it, right? So, that’s not what we’re doing. What we’re doing is I’m listening to and identifying. What really matters to you and help guide you through, step by step, a healing process.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah. So how is the gut connected to the brain?
Speaker 2: So the gut is like everything, right? Okay. Yes. Like it’s connected to the whole world. It’s because when we’re little embryos in the womb, we’re just this little collection of cells. Splits off, you have your gut in your brain, so it continues evolving from there.
Our GI system houses most of the immune, hormonal, and neurological systems, so it’s essential in helping assist all of the other systems. I call ’em automatic systems to our bodies.
Speaker 1: So how would I help myself, for example, cuz we were just talking off-camera? Yeah. About some issues, I had going on with my sinuses. Yeah. But how do I even help myself?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So as we talked about with the drainages, right? And going on, so that’s an immunological response. We look at the GI system and know we want to help heal the GI system. So we look at where the imbalances are, whether that’s in stress, whether that’s immunological, whether there’s like heavy metals or chemicals in the system.
We want to take the things out of the system that are not supposed to be in there. And we want to continue adding stuff like healthy nutrition and food, but also how you digest and assimilate your food. Cuz it’s not just what you eat, it’s how you break the food down.
Speaker 1: Okay. So do you do many tests to determine what’s going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do the baseline testing that you’d have done at a physical, but then we all do the full range functional testing, so blood stool, serum, plasma, urine, hair.
Speaker 1: so, things that not all doctors would do. You go above and beyond.
Speaker 2: Yes. We’re trained more in clinical biochemistry and laboratory diagnostic. So we know which labs to run, how to read ’em, and how to evaluate and treat based on them.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. And we have some information about your holistic family practice classes on the screen. Explain those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s all self-empowerment to help people understand how to heal themselves.
It’s not a mystery, right? We all know eating fruits and vegetables is the key to good health, but it’s why those habits and those behaviors are not there. So it’s helping to distinguish that for people and then leave them empowered to go out and do better for themselves.
Speaker 1: If somebody’s watching this and they’re interested, and they wanna come to see you, who should come to see you? And how can they get in touch with you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I treat families, so little kids all the way up to elderly and then people with ear infections up to stage four cancer. So they would call our office and schedule a first visit.
Speaker 1: Oh, that’s so interesting. Thank you so much for all that information. We really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2: Wonderful. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Sure. All right.
What do you think?