OVERVIEW
I grew up wanting to be an author but chronic illness had other plans. I was always a sick kid, but in my teens and 20’s I felt like I was dying. For years, I tried conventional and alternative medicine, working with some of the most prestigious doctors in the country
and still coming up short on answers. So, I took my health into my own hands and read everything I could find about wellness, from diagnostic manuals to diet books. In this process, with the help of some brainiac mentors, I started functioning again and fell in love with integrative medicine. I knew my life’s work was helping people heal. I wanted to change the way people felt in their bodies because I knew this would transform the way they showed up in the world, like it had for me. It was not until I started working on a deeper level of healing, grief, that I realized storytelling and medicine, could co-exist. Both are about connecting people back to themselves to create healing. Grief had been a big part of my story: abuse was part of my childhood story, something I kept a secret, not even acknowledging it to myself, for 15 years. It was not long after it first started that I began getting really sick. I carried my story in my body and it made me physically unwell. Sickness created more grief and grief impacted the way I showed up in the world. I moved through life reacting from pain instead of living my purpose from a place of confidence. Halfway through my twenties, I lost the person I thought was the love of my life; the dysfunctional ways I managed pain had no small part in that. With this loss, I knew I could not ignore grief anymore. It had to begin owning my story and working to create a new one. Just as I had done with my physical health, I started learning about what was happening within and how to make changes for health, so that I could be who I wanted to be and live the life I wanted to live.
I was sick since birth, which is no surprise since my mother was under intense stress while I was in utero. My health problems started out as simple things like colic and lactose intolerance. By the time I was in elementary school, I had already experienced a major traumatic event and symptoms of frequent headaches, fatigue, and abdominal distress appeared.
At this point, my mom took me to an iridologist, a very alternative type of practitioner who made all her health assessments by what she saw in my irises. She told me to stop eating grains, sugar, and dairy. So, at eight years old, I started my first medical diet. This was before medical diets were trendy. The term “grain free” could have been something from another language. But, my mom tried diligently to implement her recommendations into my diet and I improved so much that a few years later, I was back to eating normally.
One day, when I was about 10 years old, I noticed a lump on my leg the size of my hand, which turned out to be a mysterious infection in my lymph nodes. Although this was successfully treated with antibiotics, my health went downhill from that point on. My gastrointestinal symptoms returned. In Jr. High, I filled the toilet bowl with a fluid that looked like coke and was subsequently diagnosed with a kidney disorder believed to be caused by an autoimmune disorder. However, nobody could figure out what autoimmune disease was causing it. By the time I reached high school, I was no longer able to attend school in person and developed a hormone condition that shuts down hormone production from the brain down, a condition believed at the time to primarily occur in extreme athletes or extreme trauma victims. Conventional medicine did not know what do do with me so I tried naturopathic medicine.
Naturopathic doctors ran a better arsenal of tests, the results of which revealed I needed to be referred to specialists. At this point, I became a patient of UCLA hospital but not without first starting supplement and diet regimens which noticeably improved my functioning. At UCLA, I had a team of doctors and my team lead was one of the foremost endocrinologists in the country. During my time under their care, they found many puzzling lab results but did not know how to treat me. So, I transferred care to the Mayo Clinic, where I found another team of doctors puzzled by my case. For the next few years, I scraped by with help from naturopathic medicine, rigid therapeutic diets, and anything I could apply from my own reading. I also tried visiting some famous doctors to see if they could offer any help. With the combination of just these things, I was able to put my hormone condition into remission, stop symptoms of my kidney condition, and reverse signs of autoimmune disease.
Everything changed when I found my late rheumatologist. He was a Stanford fellow and would explain his patient protocols using PubMed articles. By the time I saw him, I felt like I was dying. At my first visit, he whipped out a piece of paper that listed the potential triggers of chronic illness and we systematically worked our way through that list over the next few years of treatment. He treated me while I attended medical school and I experienced dramatic improvement after being treated for hidden chronic bacterial and viral infections and heavy metals. Besides being my doctor, he also became a friend and a mentor who taught me how to practice like he did. A few other doctors came on board during this time and I was eventually diagnosed with mold toxicity and Lyme Disease.
Since that time, I have devoted myself to understanding the complexities of diagnosing and treating the causes and overlapping conditions associated with chronic disease.
While many of these conditions take years to heal from, I have been able to apply nearly everything I practice medically to my own health. I have nearly eliminated metal toxicity, eradicated many of my Lyme infections,
and have made amazing progress in mold treatment. Through my experiences, I have learned that healing is a process and a lifestyle. It doesn’t usually happen in 3 months or with a handful of the right supplements. It happens as you uncover layers of your health and yourself.
HEALING HAS BECOME MY STORY & I AM SHARING EVERYTHING I LEARNED SO IT CAN BECOME YOURS TOO.
MEDICAL BIO
DR. CHELSEA AZARCON IS A NATUROPATHIC MEDICAL DOCTOR.
She earned her doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine at Bastyr University, one the foremost naturopathic medical universities, globally. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from Cornell University.
THROUGH HER OWN STRUGGLES WITH CHRONIC ILLNES, DR. CHELSEA DISCOVERED A PASSION FOR INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE
INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE combines conventional medical knowledge with research based natural therapies. Through her personal experience with illness, she has worked with some of the most prestigious medical institutions in the country including the Mayo Clinic and UCLA hospital. She has also worked with a variety of accomplished alternative practitioners. She was also mentored by her late Rheumatologist, a Stanford Fellow who mentored her in evidenced based integrative medicine with application for chronic and difficult to diagnose conditions.
DURING HER UNDERGRADUATE CAREER, Dr. Chelsea worked in Cornell University’s Laboratory of Medicinal Products and Natural Chemistry, where she studied the biological activity of plants for therapeutic application, with an emphasis on oncological (anti-cancer) potential. This work also took her to the Dominican Republic on an NIH-funded research trip that evaluated local plants for use in minority-health disparity related diseases.
DURING HER DOCTORAL EDUCATION, Dr. Chelsea completed advanced training in Integrative Rheumatology, Lyme Disease, and a functional approach to Auto-Immune Disease. She also participated in an educational initiative to teach colleagues about finding hidden triggers of persistent illness.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TOLD, BY YOUR DOCTOR, THAT YOU ARE PERFECTLY HEALTHY WHILE YOU FEEL COMPLETELY AWFUL? If so, Dr. Chelsea is the doctor for you. In her current career as a Naturopathic Medical Doctor she loves working with chronic illnesses such as Lyme Disease and other persistent infections, environmental toxicity, and autoimmune disease. She also recognizes that chronic illness also encompasses any condition from which someone has not been able find relief (whether that be headaches, PMS, insomnia or weight gain) and that chronic illness almost always has complex and overlapping etiologies that require evaluation of many body systems.
SHE ENJOYS EDUCATION: she reads copious amounts of medical literature in her free time and enjoys writing and speaking about medical topics.
