about
Blood root, Sanguinaria canadensis
Many of us with chronic conditions look for natural means to address our health challenges, especially when conventional methods fail to help or have intolerable side effects. Though conventional medicine is excellent at addressing certain health concerns and emergencies, it is not as effective at enabling overall wellness. In fact, many conventional modern medical practitioners can be narrow-minded and discriminatory towards holistic modalities, especially herbalism, even though herbal medicine has thousands of years of tradition and clinical evidence to support its efficacy. Furthermore, some of us have concerns about the power that the pharmaceutical-industrial complex has over modern medicine. Many of us with chronic health conditions have to rely on conventional medicine and visit the doctor’s office frequently. But as a result of the unequal power dynamics in the hierarchical medical system, patients often experience disrespect and discrimination, especially when we admit to seeking holistic healthcare options.
Though conventional medicine often discriminates against other healthcare modalities, it can’t stop people searching for alternatives. Perhaps you're confused about where to find accurate, evidence-based, and compassionate information and advice on herbs, nutrition, and supplements for cystic fibrosis and other health conditions. It's hard to know who to trust! The internet is full of sleazy salesmen trying to make a buck off of people in pain. There are also people on the internet pushing extreme health ideologies who may not have much education or personal experience in these topics.
I envision healthcare and health education differently. What I want for myself and others like me living with chronic illness is for us to be knowledgeable about our bodies and empowered to make well-informed, safe, and effective healthcare decisions for ourselves and our loved ones.
I wish for healthcare to be environmentally sustainable and enhance our bodies’ natural abilities to heal. I wish for medicine to support healthy bodily function instead of just suppressing unhealthy function.
I wish for patients (and parents) to have the freedom to access natural and complementary healthcare without fear of discrimination or recrimination by the conventional medical establishment.
I believe healthcare, including conventional medicine, is a human right and that anyone who seeks it deserves affordable access. There are many conventional medical tools, medicines, and techniques that are lifesaving and extremely valuable for maintaining personal and communal wellness. I value these tools and encourage clients to use them when necessary, avoiding both dogmatic adherence to and dogmatic rejection of modern medicine.
I want every patient to feel empowered to make informed healthcare decisions, using nutrition, dietary supplements, and medicinal herbs as the foundations of health support so that we need to use conventional medicine less often, especially if the conventional choices come with harmful power imbalances, excessive cost, or unwanted side effects.
Though conventional medicine often discriminates against other healthcare modalities, it can’t stop people searching for alternatives. Perhaps you're confused about where to find accurate, evidence-based, and compassionate information and advice on herbs, nutrition, and supplements for cystic fibrosis and other health conditions. It's hard to know who to trust! The internet is full of sleazy salesmen trying to make a buck off of people in pain. There are also people on the internet pushing extreme health ideologies who may not have much education or personal experience in these topics.
I envision healthcare and health education differently. What I want for myself and others like me living with chronic illness is for us to be knowledgeable about our bodies and empowered to make well-informed, safe, and effective healthcare decisions for ourselves and our loved ones.
I wish for healthcare to be environmentally sustainable and enhance our bodies’ natural abilities to heal. I wish for medicine to support healthy bodily function instead of just suppressing unhealthy function.
I wish for patients (and parents) to have the freedom to access natural and complementary healthcare without fear of discrimination or recrimination by the conventional medical establishment.
I believe healthcare, including conventional medicine, is a human right and that anyone who seeks it deserves affordable access. There are many conventional medical tools, medicines, and techniques that are lifesaving and extremely valuable for maintaining personal and communal wellness. I value these tools and encourage clients to use them when necessary, avoiding both dogmatic adherence to and dogmatic rejection of modern medicine.
I want every patient to feel empowered to make informed healthcare decisions, using nutrition, dietary supplements, and medicinal herbs as the foundations of health support so that we need to use conventional medicine less often, especially if the conventional choices come with harmful power imbalances, excessive cost, or unwanted side effects.
This is the vision that inspires my work at CF Natural Health. My name is Mica and it is my mission to educate and empower others to learn more about their health and take charge of their own healing. I'm a certified clinical herbalist with 8+ years of experience helping people with cystic fibrosis, digestive disorders, respiratory issues, diabetes, anxiety, and other health concerns achieve better health through balanced nutrition, herbal medicine, targeted supplementation, and lifestyle modifications. My goal is to help you achieve resilient wellness and to help you understand your body better so that you can be less afraid, less frustrated, and more competent in your self-care.
At the beginning of my healing journey eight years ago, I was desperate for answers but I didn’t know who to turn to. As a person with cystic fibrosis, I know very well the balance between needing conventional medical care and being frustrated by its limitations and biases. After making some big changes to my diet, I had significant improvements in my health – my indigestion and gut pain significantly improved, my respiratory mucus was more under control, my fatigue began to lift, and with a regular exercise routine I felt my strength come back. All this was so encouraging, and soon I was inspired to study herbal medicine as a way to further these improvements. After several years of utilizing herbal medicine and continually improving my diet, my respiratory infections were under better control (though not completely gone), my digestive health was better than ever, the medications I had to take became more effective at combating my chronic lung infections, and my blood sugar came back into balance. But my conventional doctors knew essentially nothing about these natural healthcare options and often discouraged me from using them, not due to any evidence of their harmfulness or their lack of efficacy, but simply due to a dogmatic bias against natural medicine (as a result of several hundred years of political conflict).
In the beginning of my exploration, I found a lot of confusing and inaccurate information on the internet related to my health concerns. That’s why I became a clinical herbalist and nutritionist -- so that I could provide the kind of guidance I wish I had in the early stages of my healing journey.
At CF Natural Health, I provide both educational resources in the form of videos, eBooks, and articles, as well as one-on-one consultations where you can receive personalized education and advice on how to optimize your health by natural means. My approach is truly holistic and integrative, which means I avoid the either/or mentality. In my clinical work, I advocate for what works best in each situation, even if that might be conventional care. The services I provide are not meant to replace medical care, but they are meant to supplement that care with natural remedies.
I believe this to be in line with ancient Hippocratic medicine, one of the oldest holistic healing systems of Europe, southwest Asia, and North Africa. It is a system from which modern conventional medicine also claims ancestry. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates suggested remedies according to what worked, whether that be herbs, diet, surgery, exercise, prayer, meditation, baths, massage, dream therapy, nature immersion, and so on. It was a truly open-minded, non-dogmatic healing system based on evidence and efficacy. I strongly believe we must return to this kind of holistic, integrative system today and recognize that there are many more solutions to our health challenges than chemical drugs, though sometimes pharmaceuticals are the right choice.
All of our ancestors knew how to heal themselves with plant medicine and the common tools of daily life. Healthcare is a human right, and in addition to having access to conventional medical care when we need it, I wish for us all to regain our ancestral knowledge of how to take care of ourselves and our families in complementary and alternative ways. I want this for you, too! That’s why I am providing this resource – it’s the kind of thing I wish I had access to years ago.
Above all, I want us to remember that humans are part of Nature, therefore natural methods can heal disease in the human body!
If you'd like to learn more, download my free eBooks or take a class with me. Please consider donating to support my work, which II freely share with the CF community.
At the beginning of my healing journey eight years ago, I was desperate for answers but I didn’t know who to turn to. As a person with cystic fibrosis, I know very well the balance between needing conventional medical care and being frustrated by its limitations and biases. After making some big changes to my diet, I had significant improvements in my health – my indigestion and gut pain significantly improved, my respiratory mucus was more under control, my fatigue began to lift, and with a regular exercise routine I felt my strength come back. All this was so encouraging, and soon I was inspired to study herbal medicine as a way to further these improvements. After several years of utilizing herbal medicine and continually improving my diet, my respiratory infections were under better control (though not completely gone), my digestive health was better than ever, the medications I had to take became more effective at combating my chronic lung infections, and my blood sugar came back into balance. But my conventional doctors knew essentially nothing about these natural healthcare options and often discouraged me from using them, not due to any evidence of their harmfulness or their lack of efficacy, but simply due to a dogmatic bias against natural medicine (as a result of several hundred years of political conflict).
In the beginning of my exploration, I found a lot of confusing and inaccurate information on the internet related to my health concerns. That’s why I became a clinical herbalist and nutritionist -- so that I could provide the kind of guidance I wish I had in the early stages of my healing journey.
At CF Natural Health, I provide both educational resources in the form of videos, eBooks, and articles, as well as one-on-one consultations where you can receive personalized education and advice on how to optimize your health by natural means. My approach is truly holistic and integrative, which means I avoid the either/or mentality. In my clinical work, I advocate for what works best in each situation, even if that might be conventional care. The services I provide are not meant to replace medical care, but they are meant to supplement that care with natural remedies.
I believe this to be in line with ancient Hippocratic medicine, one of the oldest holistic healing systems of Europe, southwest Asia, and North Africa. It is a system from which modern conventional medicine also claims ancestry. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates suggested remedies according to what worked, whether that be herbs, diet, surgery, exercise, prayer, meditation, baths, massage, dream therapy, nature immersion, and so on. It was a truly open-minded, non-dogmatic healing system based on evidence and efficacy. I strongly believe we must return to this kind of holistic, integrative system today and recognize that there are many more solutions to our health challenges than chemical drugs, though sometimes pharmaceuticals are the right choice.
All of our ancestors knew how to heal themselves with plant medicine and the common tools of daily life. Healthcare is a human right, and in addition to having access to conventional medical care when we need it, I wish for us all to regain our ancestral knowledge of how to take care of ourselves and our families in complementary and alternative ways. I want this for you, too! That’s why I am providing this resource – it’s the kind of thing I wish I had access to years ago.
Above all, I want us to remember that humans are part of Nature, therefore natural methods can heal disease in the human body!
If you'd like to learn more, download my free eBooks or take a class with me. Please consider donating to support my work, which II freely share with the CF community.
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Please consider donating to keep this work going. Since 2013, I have stewarded this website to provide free health information to the CF community and beyond. I have done this out of dedication to helping others achieve optimal health with nutrition and complementary medicine. This is not lucrative work. I am disabled, low income, and recently had a double lung transplant. If you benefit from the information I provide here, please consider donating with the button above. Your contribution helps me continue this work and compensates me for the last nine years of unpaid labor. Thank you!
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