I am passionate about bringing you back to mental clarity, physical strength, and emotional resilience.

I am a Naturopathic & Functional Medicine doctor, specialist in midlife health changes. But I wasn’t always as passionate about midlife health, or health in general, as I am today.

I was the mom who swore by conventional medicine and thought the doctor’s word was gospel.

I was the mom that fought with the admin at my pediatrician’s office if a vaccine booster wasn’t available on time. It wasn’t until my very young children were diagnosed with autism and my beloved pediatrician told me there was nothing she could do and that I should investigate lifelong therapies and group homes that I had to go back and re-examine my thoughts on medicine, health, and healing.

I am an immigrant to this great country.

During undergrad, my career counselor at Rutgers University, NJ, advised that I should choose a career in accounting so I would always have a job. I did so and my first career in the US was in finance and accounting at a prestigious bank on Wall Street. I was good at it and enjoyed it reasonably well, but the work wasn’t my passion.

Years later, experiencing the setback with my children’s health woke up the health activist and passion for medicine in me.

I did two years of high school physics, chemistry, and biology as pre-requisite education and attended four years of Naturopathic medical school at Bastyr University, California. My first job after graduating was at a large integrative health center. At the same time, I studied and certified in functional medicine from the Institute for Functional Medicine, IFM, and ReCode 2.0, a revolutionary program developed by Dr. Dale Bredesen, MD, to reverse Alzheimer’s.

Ambition + hard work + difficult divorce + single motherhood of special needs kids + ignoring self-care = BURNOUT

Around this time, I began to feel exhausted and burnt out. I had just gone through a grueling 6-year program of studying, was commuting over an hour twice daily for work, had recently gone through a difficult divorce, was single parenting my two special needs children and I had just arrived at menopause.

Burnout Is Insidious

I didn’t realize that I had been running on empty for several years until I checked my heart rate variability, HRV, as part of a cognitive resilience program I was developing at work and saw that it was 3! Healthy HRVs range from 40-80s and beyond. The higher your number the more resilient you are. I was at 3, near dead! Hard as it was to believe, I needed that external verification to give myself permission to take a break.

Quitting A Much-Loved Job, Not Realizing The Toll Menopause Would Take On Me

With much reluctance, I quit my much-loved job, started bio-identical hormone therapy, BHRT, and took a few months off to give my body the rest it desperately needed.

You might ask why I didn’t anticipate this and start hormone therapy sooner. Even though I studied women’s health and the importance of hormones in medical school, when the time came, I wasn’t prepared. Self-care wasn’t my strong suit. Can you relate? Perimenopause was sudden, swift, and short. Before I knew it, I was in menopause. Hot flashes, night sweats and insomnia were constant companions.

No One Prepares Us For Menopause

Part of the problem is that no one tells us about what to expect at menopause. Not mothers, not older sisters, not friends. We go into it, blind, shocked at what is happening to our mind and body. I swore I was going to address everything the moment things slowed down a bit. But they never did, as they usually don’t. Only when my body was in complete meltdown did I take a break.

Today I am passionate about talking about menopause and question why we don’t talk about it. The word has gathered so much misinformation and liability that even when women are suffering, they don’t discuss it. To me, this is a travesty.

Dementia Is Preventable?

My second job at a smaller clinic focused on brain health where I worked with many patients to reverse and prevent Alzheimer’s dementia. Using Dr. Bredesen’s Precision Medicine approach to treat and prevent neurodegenerative disease, I saw many people improve their symptoms and quality of life. It is a systems-based approach used to treat complex, chronic disease. I was hooked. There was a way to prevent and treat dementia! I became passionate about teaching people how to do so. As time went on, I learnt that, with Precision Medicine, most chronic disease is preventable. But we need right action with the right guidance.

Breast Cancer

About a year or so into my new job, I decided to start my own private practice as I wanted to serve my patients in my own unique way. Right around that time, I felt a lump in my breast which was diagnosed as triple negative breast cancer. I was young and had family history of ovarian cancer.

“Choosing Quality Of Life Over Longevity”

My oncologist was not thrilled that I was on hormone replacement but she, to her credit, did not try to convince me to stop it. A surgeon who came highly recommended, however, tried her best to get me to stop taking hormones. When I said that I had done the research and hormones were not contra-indicated in my case, she finally declared that I was “choosing quality of life over longevity.” Talk about poor bedside manner.

Many Doctors Still Don’t Know The Truth

It was of course my choice and I stuck to my guns. However, I was appalled that a well renowned surgeon would not have taken the time to update her knowledge of hormone replacement for menopausal women. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy, surgery and radiation followed.

Brain Fog or Early Onset Dementia?

Shortly after radiation, there were a couple of days where I felt that my brain could not think. I literally sat on the couch, wanting to bring something up in my head, and I could not. My brain was a blank. That was scary. It felt as if the radiation had zapped all the hormone receptors in my brain. Instinctively I doubled and tripled down on the hormones for the next several days. Sure enough, my brain came back online. Perhaps it was chemo brain, but I never felt that during or shortly after chemo. I had a sense that that was perhaps what early onset dementia would feel like.

Arriving At My Passion And Goal: Resilience

In the weeks and months after my treatment, it became clear to me that my passion was midlife health and I wanted to help individuals build mental, emotional, and physical resilience. While I only help you with your physical health, I know for myself, that having my physical health back along with the right mindset has enabled me to become resilient in all ways.

What Is Stopping You?

I want you to ask yourself: what is stopping you from living a full life? What are some of the health challenges that are slowing you down today? What is standing between you and a full life? Whether you have a diagnosed illness or suspect something is awry with your health, the time to begin taking care of yourself is today. Prioritize self-care. Ask if you have the right team of healthcare providers. Are you getting the best care possible? Do you have an individualized plan for your health and longevity?

My Comprehensive Wellness Approach

Today I work with successful professionals, men, and women, that are pro-active in all areas of their lives. I help them clarify their health goals and create long term strategies & short-term tactics to accomplish them.

I bring compassion and awareness into health challenges faced by midlife men and women. So many things become an issue at this time, from cancer to menopause to andropause, to concerns about brain health, to gut health, thyroid issues, autoimmune illnesses etc., that having an expert who can work on figuring out the root cause of disease is your best guide.

Siloed medicine has proven to be counterproductive. Most specialists can diagnose you with disease only when pathology has progressed far enough. But do you want to wait for that? Wouldn’t you rather take your health in your hands and take a preventative approach to disease so you can live a full life with vigor and enthusiasm.

I start with comprehensive testing and working with you over time to make sure all areas of concern in your health are addressed. Wherever there are red flags, we do a deep dive and work to reverse all those symptoms before they have a chance to become entrenched and become disease.

I invite you to join me in your journey back to mental clarity, physical strength and emotional resilience.

To Your Health

Manna Semby, ND, IFMCP