Source Acupuncture & Wellness

Sandy is a GODDESS! I started seeing Sandy in August for hormone issues, depression, acne, and low energy. I can honestly say, you probably wouldn’t recognize the person I was in August due to all of the changes I’ve gone through! Sandy’s approach to medicine is to focus on nutrition first. Unlike most practitioners, she does not default to supplements and herbs, and instead works on diagnosing what is going amiss regarding diet and toxins we often put into our bodies. She also does an amazing job of explaining the scientific reasoning behind the suggestions she is making. Previous acupuncturists I have been to have always been so esoteric that I found their explanations to be a little hokey and unrelatable.
For me, I had just gone through a very traumatic time of going off of birth control after being on it for 15 years. I immediately gained ten pounds and started having very painful periods. My OBGYN pushed me into getting an IUD to help regulate my periods, and that was a terrible fit for me. I had pain and bleeding every day, and three different OBGYNs encouraged me to keep the IUD for 6 months while it balanced out. I suffered through for six months while still having pain and bleeding daily. I finally got fed up with the pain and had it taken out and went back on oral birth control because I needed to know I wasn’t going to have crippling cramps for at least a while. The birth control did help alleviate my weight gain and cramps, but I still felt so anxious and depressed. I have always gravitated towards natural medicine, and I had lost complete faith in OBGYNs, so I decided to seek out an acupuncturist.
Sandy is a great listener and a very intuitive practitioner. I really didn’t know where to start with the problems I was having because I was feeling so down and defeated. I decided to start with the depression and hormone issues. She explained to me why my body had reacted so poorly to the IUD, and that my body was fighting it like the foreign object it was. She also explained that I was likely having hormone issues from having been on birth control for so long, and that it’s possible my body was relying on estrogen from the pill instead of making the right amount itself. She then asked if I had been experiencing anxiety as well (which I was way too overwhelmed with all of my other problems to even prioritize the anxiety!) and explained how it all tied in with nutrition and my diet. She gave me a great pep talk that day on what my life could feel like when I’m getting optimal nutrition. The talk really hit home, and I immediately cut out the usual suspects (gluten, dairy, sugar, and processed foods in general). I felt results within a week of making changes, and have been working with Sandy since to fine-​tune my health.
Since my initial appointment in August, I have stopped taking birth control and am happy to report that I’m having short, painless periods, my skin has cleared up, I’m building better muscle tone (I’ve been scrawny my whole life), I have fantastic energy, and my anxiety is way, way down. We also diagnosed a problem I have had since a kid – migraines. I have been to every kind of specialist under the sun since I was about 8. I’ve seen everyone from neurologists to cardiologists and have tried pain killers, anti depressants, and blood pressure medications. I had assumed it was a hopeless cause and hadn’t even thought to bring them up with Sandy until I had come to her office one day after taking an Imitrex for a migraine I had that morning, and she mentioned the harmful affect pharmaceuticals could have on the body. She asked if I was getting enough greens and suggested I try a daily magnesium supplement. I honestly thought to myself «if it was that simple, don’t you think a doctor would have thought to suggest that to me years ago?» Instead I decided to try it (because she really is a goddess) and I have bee migraine free for two months now.