06/05/2026
Some local providers secretly slide their patients my business card.
Others react to my name like someone just said "Voldemort" in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.💫
Why? Well, universal law...half support, half challenge.
But it's actually pretty simple.
The ones who quietly send people my way tend to see the limitations of the system every day, and they don't egotistically react to their inability to help their patient as a personal failure.
They know what it's like to have 10 minutes with a patient who has brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, chronic stress, hormone changes, inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, or symptoms that don't fit neatly into a single diagnosis.
They know the patient needs more than 10 minutes.
They know lifestyle, stress, sleep, nutrition, relationships, environment, and physiology matter.
They'd love to spend an hour digging into the story.
The system simply isn't built for that.
So when medications aren't moving the needle and nothing dangerous has been found, some of them send patients to me.
Not because they don't believe in medicine.
Because they recognize where medicine ends and where deeper investigation begins.
Then there's the other group.
The group that completely dismisses the fact that I am a licensed, evidence based medicine practicing, nurse practitioner but hears "functional medicine" and immediately becomes skeptical thinking that the treatment plan is essential oils and witchcraft.
That reaction isn't random.
It's often influenced by where they trained, who mentored them, the era of medicine they grew up in, and the academic culture surrounding them.
Northeastern Pennsylvania sits in a fascinating geographic position.
We're surrounded by the influence of some of the most powerful academic medical institutions in the country.
That culture has produced incredible advances in diagnosis, specialization, and acute care.
However, when we look at overall health by region in the US...the best performance comes from the region that is the furthest away....(where the way I practice is much more common).
But it has also shaped what many providers consider legitimate, what questions they ask, and what treatments they prescribe.
Neither side wakes up in the morning trying to harm patients.
They're operating from different maps.
One asks:
"What disease are we dealing with and what do I prescribe?"
The other asks:
"Why isn't this person recovering? What else is going on on their life?"
Both questions are important.
The problem is that patients are rarely taught why their healthcare providers may answer them so differently.
Once you understand the system influencing the person sitting across from you, a lot of the confusion suddenly makes sense.
🧠 - Stay tuned -- I'll share my recent experience from the other side of the stethoscope 🤪 & a spirited conversation I had with a very vanilla medicine colleague...
Have you ever received completely different advice from two healthcare professionals and wondered how both could possibly be talking about the same problem?
