Hey there! I’m Alex.

I’m a recovered chronic pain sufferer, a physician assistant, a published scientific author, a mom, sister, daughter, wife and friend.

I experienced chronic daily migraine, plus associated symptoms of anxiety & panic, throughout my 20s. My once or twice monthly migraines of the teen years became more insidious over time, creeping up from monthly to weekly to daily.

Eventually, I felt completely trapped in the pain cycle. I lived with daily migraine pain for 3 entire years & had no idea of how to get out of it.

I never left the house without a bottle of Excedrin in my bag.

I always had an escape plan for social events in case an inevitable migraine kicked in.

I spent months navigating and avoiding pain “triggers”.

I worried daily about how migraines could hold me back from my dreams of becoming a PA and a mom. I was terrified that I had to live the rest of my life in a pain state. Worst of all, I was deeply disappointed when the system that I had trusted and dedicated my life’s work to - traditional medicine - was failing me when I needed it most. When I was the patient. 

I’ve had the privilege of working and training with the best medical teams on the planet at Stanford University and beyond. When I was trapped in the cycle of daily head pain, I was fortunate enough to seek help from brilliant subspecialists with access to cutting-edge tools & resources.

If anyone could have been “healed” from chronic pain by the traditional medical model, it would have been me.

But guess what, I wasn’t.

Visit after visit, test after test, I had no answers. No “obvious” underlying cause. No abnormal labs or imaging. No “reason” for pain that I could to cling to. What I did have was a head full of, “you’re just stressed” or, “we don’t treat that here, you’ll need a different referral”. The ones that get it, get it.

I felt defeated, hopeless, and frustrated.

Trust me, I spent plenty of time wallowing in self-pity and helplessness.

But I refused to accept that I would live the rest of my life in daily chronic pain. I was willing to try anything.

Leaning on my professional skillset as a researcher and scientist, I got curious about pain.

I read anything I could get my hands on about neuroscience, psychology, orthopedics, the mind-body connection, the gut-brain axis, personal development, bio-hacking, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, physical therapy, chiropractic care, spirituality, etc., etc., you get it!

I took my newfound knowledge and began experimenting on myself.

Through a LOT of trial and error… or a robust scientific process, if you will… I FINALLY experienced a shift in my symptoms when I started honoring the potency of the mind-body connection.

Suddenly everything clicked for me.

I uncovered that the root cause of my chronic pain was somatic… I had unprocessed thoughts, feelings and emotions stuck in my physical body that were wreaking havoc.

I finally started to understand that pain was a message from my body that something needed to shift. But it wasn’t my thyroid or a rare metal toxicity that needed shifting, it was my mind.

Coming from a deeply scientific background- a world of protein biochemistry, cancer genetics, and clinical research- the idea that my pain was somatic felt hard to accept.

In the traditional medical system, the concept that “dis-ease” in the body is related to “dis-ease” in the mind is absolutely counter-cultural.

But for me, the truth was undeniable, processing all of my stuck emotions (the 101 of healing somatic pain) was getting rid of my migraines. So, I kept going, kept feeling my feelings, and after just a couple months my migraines stopped.

Years down the road now, and still pain-free, I’ve learned everything there is to learn about somatic chronic pain.

I have come to understand that the term ‘somatic’ is not at all woo-woo, nor does it mean “it’s all in your head”. In fact, it’s a rather simple word used to encompass a complex breadth of sophisticated physiologic processes that are all working together simultaneously in your body - epigenetics, neuroplasticity, and nervous system regulation.

Somatic pain is nothing to be embarrassed of, to shy away from, or to put down. It simply just hasn’t had its “moment” in the traditional medical community… yet!!

It is my mission to normalize the concept of somatic pain, to emphasize the importance of the mind-body connection, to help folks trapped in the pain cycle get out of “trigger land”, to move you away from solely focussing on labs and imaging for answers, and to stop you from looking for the pie in the sky to figure out what’s wrong.

If the countless visits or tests haven’t been working for you, perhaps it’s time for a new approach.

I believe in you so much! When you’re ready, I am here to be your teammate, your space-holder, your mentor, your way-shower, your teacher & guide.

Let’s get you out of pain! You deserve to Bloom.

XO,
Alex