Episode #093

Dr. Nicole Rivera

How Functional Medicine Can Uncover What’s Really Causing Poor Health

People may not realize that depression and anxiety could stem from something that’s going on in your body. Click To Tweet

Dr. Nicole Rivera is unlike most doctors out there.

Instead of taking one course and broadly applying it to her patients, she continues to learn and get certified in many different disciplines so she can combine a bit of each to help her patients heal.

In chiropractic school, for example, Dr. Rivera excelled and enjoyed the classes most people hated, such as biochemistry. She even wanted to go to school for neuroscience, as you’ll hear more about in this episode.

She takes an integrative approach that really makes her stand out as a functional medicine practitioner.

And that’s why I couldn’t wait to get her on the show to share her personal experience with healing her own health ailments and how she helps her patients do the same.

Dr. Rivera does a phenomenal job at this but it wasn’t always easy for her.

As she shares in the episode, she faced her own health struggles that most doctors failed to help her solve.

In doing that herself, she realized that she could offer the same type of healing to her patients.

When you tune into this episode, you’ll discover the elaborate testing she does with her patients, why she does this, and how she takes an integrative approach to health.

You’ll also learn more about common therapies that didn’t work for her despite their claims that they’re incredibly effective.

Dr. Rivera also shares alternative therapies and why these may or may not be helpful for patients.

The longer it takes you to break a sweat in an infrared sauna, the more compromised your lymphatic system is. Click To Tweet

For anyone reading this that doesn’t know Dr. Nicole Rivera, she’s a leading expert in integrative medicine. 

She received a doctorate in chiropractic, a bachelor’s degree in psychology pre-medicine, and she’s graduated from the Klinghardt Academy and the Kresser Institute.

Dr. Rivera is also an active member of the Institute of Functional Medicine and the Academy for Comprehensive Integrative Medicine and she’s the best selling cookbook author of Eat for Your Gut.

After 10 years of practicing a conventional approach and chiropractic care, she has since moved on to using cutting-edge therapies and a personalized approach to medicine.

She founded the Integrative Wellness Group and the Institute for Integrative Wellness which the former specializes in functional medicine and integrative medicine and the latter teaches other practitioners how to do this too.

Since founding the Integrative Wellness Group, she now specializes in gastrointestinal issues, autoimmunity, lyme literate, hormone, thyroid, and endocrine disorders, as well as mold toxicity, and safe detoxification methods.

To say that Dr. Rivera is well-rounded and educated would be an understatement.

And, in this episode, you’re bound to hear medical approaches you may not have realized existed.

Here’s a brief overview of everything Dr. Rivera and I get into:

  • Why Dr. Rivera chooses an elaborate testing and integrative approach with her clients
  • Dr. Rivera’s background and how she landed in this space
  • What happened when she started testing herself
  • How 10 years of being a pescatarian affected her health
  • Mercury toxicity, parasitic infections in the gut, and Pots Syndrome
  • The red flags Dr. Rivera first noticed in herself before getting help
  • Where Dr. Rivera first started in healing herself and what she did after that
  • Dr. Rivera also shares her experience with chelation and what she wishes people knew before doing it to remove heavy metals from their system
  • The results of taking 40 natural supplements per day
  • Why she addressed emotional layers in order to improve health
  • Meridian based therapies
  • What an infrared sauna can tell you about your lymphatic system
  • Muscle testing, including what that is, its limitations, and why someone who choose to do this
  • How functional medicine differs from a conventional approach and what it taps into
  • Why some people see incredible results in certain therapies and others don’t
  • Why Dr. Rivera tests hair and DNA in her patients and what these can tell you about your health
  • Allego scan
  • Bioenergetic therapies
  • Bioscan SRT

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