Meet your Doctor
My mission is to help you, the patient, be heard, discover how and why you got unwell and help you heal. I will help you pave the way to your fullest vibrant health using lifestyle techniques and sometimes medication as well. I hold your hand along the way and teach you little by little at the rate that you can absorb new changes into your life. Your ultimate Vibrant Health is my goal for you. I hope that you will realize the potential of having a trusting relationship with my practice along with my coaching collaborators and will continue to be with me long after you have reached your goal.
Varsha Rathod, MD
I realize today that I am who I am supposed to be–just that! I went from wanting to be a nutritionist to getting into medical school- my parent’s dream, not mine. Today, I have come full circle, as I have learned that Food is truly your medicine as is love, air, water, movement, sunlight and self realization through meditation. So yes, I am your nutritionist, doctor and more.
I have 12 years of conventional clinical and hospital medical experience and 23 years of integrative medical clinical practice experience. This gave me plenty of opportunity to grow and learn with my patients and therefore serve your needs today. I enjoy a cozy and intimate one on one or a small group setting to learn about you and work with you. My joy comes from creating a plan with you for your healing and to watch you bloom and feel vibrant again. When this happens again and again, I know that Functional Medicine and true personalization to your uniqueness works! It worked for me to get rid of my auto-immune disease and it can work for you as well. Here is hoping that we will continue to know each other for a long time.
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I entered the space of integrative medicine in 1997, when I developed an autoimmune condition, Hashimoto’s disease. I was told by my primary care provider that I should be happy that I did not have Rheumatoid Arthritis or Lupus, the sort of disfiguring diseases that are hard to live with and even harder to treat. Instead, she said, because all I had was Hashimoto’s, I would be okay as long as I committed myself to medicating with thyroid pills everyday ad infinitum. At 36 years of age, I believed that there had to be a better way.
Reviewing my diet and history, I began to form an understanding of what triggered my disease in a way conventional medicine was never able to explain to me. My hunch that there might be solutions to improve the function of my thyroid rather than simply supplementing its work led me down the path to integrative medicine.
I realized the error in providing my patients with rigid preset treatment plans for their diagnoses, like we’ve been taught to do in the medical community, and began to create a new space where the physician-patient relationship became a sacred space, where they would share with me their ideas of when and why they got sick. For years, I used the many tools of integrative medicine that I learned, combining holistic and conventional medicine to form new treatments, and it worked better for my patients than before.
In 2008, I got introduced to Functional Medicine, a branch of integrative medicine that offers a heuristic for finding root causes of complex symptoms and diseases. This new approach focused on bringing five core biological systems into harmony, and it allowed me to comprehensively assess health and wellness in a way that even spot-checking with integrative medicine could not. My patients’ positive health outcomes improved tremendously. Seeing this, I enrolled myself in the first training and certification program offered by the Institute of Functional Medicine; years of heavy learning and a hard test eventually brought fruition to my dream: I was able to obtain my certification to practice functional medicine for my patients. During this process, I used what I learned to heal myself from the symptoms of Hashimoto’s and am proud to report that I have been off all thyroid medication since April 2010.
I’ve realized that as doctors, we need to pay special attention to the principles of what keeps our health and vitality in balance and what leads to this balance being lost creating disease states. My goal, always, is to help keep the patient in power of their own health, and to serve as an aid who can help elucidate the how’s and why’s of getting well.
I invite you to join FAIM to create a team for your healing. I learned to do it on my own and it took nearly 14 years to get rid of my illness. You do not have to take my path. To help you I utilize education through coaching on Health, Lifestyle, Exercise and Nutrition . A little early hand holding and education goes a long way in helping you feel motivated and empowered to heal at a faster pace than if you did it all on your own.