Education:
I have always been interested in health and the human body. I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1996 with a Bachelor’s in Biology and Psychology.
In May of 2000, I graduated from New York Medical College with an M.D. and then completed a transitional year internship at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Medical Center in New York City in June 2001.
I then completed my residency training at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in 2004.
In September of 2018 I graduated from the Integrative Medicine Fellowship with Dr. Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona, Department of Integrative Medicine and am now Board Certified in Integrative Medicine.
In addition, I have completed the IFM certification program and exam and am a Certified Institute for Functional Medicine Practitioner.
Experience:
Upon completion of my residency training, I was hired as an Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. While at Baylor I trained both medical students and residents to treat patients with brain injuries, strokes, spinal cord injuries, polytrauma, amputations, orthopedic injuries, cancer, neurological disorders, spasticity, auto-immune diseases, cardiopulmonary issues. In addition, I ran a Pediatric Physiatry clinic for children with developmental delays and spasticity issues, and helped to provide them with appropriate bracing, wheelchairs, and other adaptive equipment.
As a member of the Houston Marathon Medical team, I helped runners address issues relating to long distance running, shoe wear, body mechanics, and musculoskeletal imbalances.
After 5 years at Baylor, I joined a private practice at the Methodist Hospital. There I ran a general inpatient consult service for patients with brain tumors, neurological disorders, auto-immune diseases, joint replacements, strokes, spinal cord injuries and other various rehabilitation diagnoses. After 1 year at the Methodist, my husband, a Board Certified Dermatologist, completed his residency and we decided to move back to New Jersey to be closer to family.
After a short transition, I worked at Central Jersey Rehabilitation Medicine at Healthsouth in Tinton Falls. I treated in-patients in the Acute Rehabilitation Setting. While seeing inpatients, I also ran a small outpatient practice with a wide scope of patients. My patient population ranged from post-stroke patients, to post-op orthopedic patients.
I am trained in Nerve Conduction Studies/Electromyography (EMG) and can perform trigger point injections, joint injections, botox procedures for spastic patients. I coordinated an amputee clinic and have experience in prescribing prosthetics and orthotics for patients.
In my practice, I saw a significant number of patients with arthritis, auto-immune diseases, and musculoskeletal disorders that significantly impacted their quality of life.
Having always been interested in the role diet, exercise and environment plays in health, I have studied many hours of lectures in numerous areas of Integrative and Functional Medicine. I decided to formalize my training and am currently enrolled simultaneously in a fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona as well as the Functional Medicine fellowship through the Institute for Functional Medicine.
Over the past several years, I began integrating my knowledge of Integrative and Functional Medicine into my western medical practice and have had success in helping refractory patients manage their symptoms and disease states. My goal is to give you the knowledge in order to control your health, rather than letting your health control you.