We caught up with the brilliant and insightful SUNAO GILBERT a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

SUNAO, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

The defining moment in my career occurred when I was sitting on a workstation, working in the emergency department. I had not seen a good friend and colleague of mine in several years and she commented on how sorry she was that I was still dealing with a very severe skin eczema. The last time I had seen her was about 10 years prior.

The back story is, I began having eczema at the beginning of my residency. It was very minor at first started on tiny patches on the back of my hands, in the bends of my elbows and the back of my knees. At first it was extremely mild I needed no medication but as my residency progressed, they would come and stay more often, take longer to go away and when it returned it may be a bit more severe. Noting that a little Benadryl cream or OTC hydrocortisone couldn’t help.

Back in those days I was very into juice fasting and juicing to lose weight. I wasn’t doing it to be primarily healthy, but to be skinny more healthily. I was always a chubby kid and so I was always on some kind of diet. So, it was just like me to decide that I was going to do a water fast for 7 days. Consequently, I read about water fasting and then jumped right into it. It was great. After the initial couple days, I began having more energy was able to fit into my clothes again after about the fifth day. I remember, it was Super Bowl Sunday that my fast ended because I ended my fast horrifically. I did not ease into eating food. I did not do the broths, and the vegetable juices, and slowly eat salads and fruits and then ease back into regular food. Of course not. I drank alcohol and ate every living thing under the sun at that Super Bowl party. About 2 or 3 days later I was covered head to toe in eczema.

From that day forward, my life with my skin, my self-image, my faith became extremely difficult. I was hideous. I was constantly scratching. I was using topical Benadryl and some topical steroids. However, I would not use steroids orally, well only extremely infrequently. I did take steroids on a couple occasions because it was so overbearingly itchy. I would always have a brush with me so that I could scratch. I lived covered in calamine lotion. I spent hours in the bathtub. But I refused to take immunosuppressants. Today the equivalent would be Skyrizi or Cibinqo. I refused to take any medication regularly.

But anyway, I went to many doctors. I had the scratch test done and the results were all negative. I had no allergies according to the doctors. They could only advise me to take medicine and swim in the ocean as salt water was known to have healing properties. However, How, could I? My skin was scratched raw!! It was open and oozing.

It was on the palms of my hands it made it so difficult to work in the emergency department and wash my hands with soap and water. I had impetigo on my neck so I would wear a bandanna and make sure that every part of my body was covered while I was working. I always carried a tub of Vaseline with me because my skin could not retain any moisture. The moment that my skin got dry, it would crack open which like having thousands of papercuts. I flaked skin wherever I went. I looked like I was 70 years old. During this time, I was depressed and so I ate to manage my pain and so I gained a ton of weight as well. I think my weight got up to 200 lbs.

Again, this all lasted, 10 years. It all turned around that day my girlfriend Yvonne, an emergency physician becoming a Functional Medicine physician, sat next to me and told me that she did not care what anybody else said or what any other tests I had done told me. She said that my rash stemmed from what I was eating. I explained that I had done the scratch test. She immediately shut me down. She told me that I needed complete the tests that she was going to send me in the mail and that she would help me.

That was the day my life changed. That was the day I began my new existence and began healing my eczema. It was the day that I called eczema my blessing.

I completed the tests that she sent me in the mail and found out that I had developed an allergy to eggs, milk and wheat as well as a leaky gut which pretty much gave me mild sensitivities to everything that I ate regularly. The next 3 months for the hardest. I could not eat anything with eggs, dairy or wheat to pretty much everything delicious. Back then there were not a lot of things that were gluten free. Almond milk wasn’t a thing. Definitely, no cashew milk or almond milk ice cream. That meant no more cheese, Yogurt, chocolate, cake, bread, crackers, doughnuts or pasta. No Doritos, or anything with sour cream and onion or ranch flavored. I even found out that the flavored vegetables in the frozen section have milk in them. That meant no red vines for most of gummy bears that have wheat in them. The things that I would never suspect would have wheat, milk and eggs, have one, if not all of them as one of their major ingredients.

I love food, so at that time I decided that I was going to go raw. Yes, raw food only. I love food so much that I learned about raw cuisine. There was no way that I was going to eat salads all day, every day. It had to be good food. So, I got “cookbooks” about raw food. I took a weeklong intensive on making raw food in Southern Arizona at the famed retreat, Tree Of Life, headed by Gabriel Cousins, MD. I learned about making raw chocolate. Raw pizza. Raw pies and cakes. Nut cheeses and dehydrated crackers, you name it.

I was able to draw from Guidance, willpower, determination and the support of my parents to abstain from all I was addicted to, and in about 3 to 5 months I was 70% healed. Of course, during this time, I was also replenishing by body with supplements and healing my gut at the same time. By then, I was able to sleep at night because my itching was almost gone. My skin was slowly healing. I was losing weight. I felt better overall. I went on a cruise with my girlfriends and was able to expose my skin, enjoy the sun and look great in my swimsuit.

It was at that time, I decided to embark upon the path to becoming a functional medicine practitioner. That is when I started my education and decided to complete a fellowship in regenerative and metabolic medicine.

SUNAO, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got into my business as aforementioned.

I am here to help my clients roll back the “clock”. Time is about quality as much as quantity. Time is priceless.

I am here to help people get back time. To live each moment with energy, strength, beauty and resiliency. I am here to help others thrive at this very moment. I do this using premium nutraceuticals, cutting edge peptides, individualized compounded bioidentical hormones and life coaching.

“Life” is what wears us down. Becoming healthy is not only about taking the nutraceuticals or the medications I prescribe or about performing the protocols that I recommend. Becoming healthy also entails calming down, breathing, grounding and getting into a parasympathetic state. Its about finding peace.

All of this is easy to say.

It’s important to breathe and meditate. It’s also amazing to incorporate Heart Rate Variability in our life as well. But even more important, on a real day to day level, It’s important to make space in our brains. Space to think. I think a lot of us need help decompressing our daily lives and setting goals that are in alignment with what we truly want. I feel that we need help cutting out the “fat” in our life. We need help organizing and making sure that the precious energy we expend is propelling us in the direction we desire to go and not just energy wasted.

We’ve gotten in our current state of dis-ease by having unhealthy habits, which have been in the works for years. What seemed to be fine, isn’t anymore. We have developed coping mechanisms that have sustained and even allowed our malady to grow. We need a new way to prioritize, categorize and thrive and therefore, I feel like a life coach is also extremely beneficial to many clients. This is often paramount when trying to figure out a new way of life.

I am most proud of the fact that I have an extensive history as an emergency medicine physician. Consequently, I understand the gaps in allopathic medicine and the health challenges that most people deal with sometime in their life and what hoops they are jumping through to get heard with their regular provider. Whether it be their internist, cardiologist, rheumatologist, neurologist, orthopedist, etc….I bridge the gap in their current understanding. I explain why they are unable to get healthy in our current system of medicine and what needs to be done. With this understanding in place, we can embark upon a new path to optimum health.

When dealing with any client, no matter the complaint or symptom, my mind is focused on anti-aging, which means first getting my clients to a state of optimum health. I not only want to be healed. I want you to be younger.

I educate my clients on understanding that their complaints are just symptoms of their body being out of balance. Together, we find that way back to balance. Parts of the body that are stressed out need a time de-stress and rest. that which is depleted needs to be replenished. It is about giving the body exactly what it needs, to do what it does naturally, heal itself. I focus on brining oneself to back to a harmonious state of being. This entails getting each body system to effectively communicate with the other and to work together; getting each cell to work at its most efficient state and vibrate at a higher frequency,

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I was told that people won’t come spend money on what I have to offer, but I was drowning. I started this practice without loans or grants. I started my practice with what I had in my account, credit cards and with continued money from working as an emergency physician.

How could I sustain a practice not using the insurance model. How could I price myself to be competitive and stay in business and not have to see 30 patients a day? How could I do this and not use Botox to get people in the door?
The one thing that I had to learn was that people spend money where they find value. When I initially started this practice, I was told that I needed to do insurance, that nobody would want to spend money on things like this when they could use their insurance.

I had to learn that what I do is valuable. And those who find what I do valuable, will pay the price I ask if I solve a problem. I found that I had to find my worth, name my price and stick to it. I had to price my services at a level that felt comfortable to me in my gut. A price that made me happy about the time I spent giving the client my all.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

I believe a firm belief that what we do as an integrative, functional medicine, metabolic medicine, anti-aging practitioner is effective and is truly the answer to true health.

So many times, I was laughed at by my colleagues in the emergency department. Mainstream medicine says that there are no studies to conclusively say that the peptides and off label FDA uses of medications are helpful and not harmful. Western medicine says that those who have depression need an SSRI, not a protocol to balance the gut and supplement the precursors to neurotransmitters. There is no Prozac deficiency!

It’s important to have a few sources of medications and nutraceuticals used. The FDA is constantly changing rules and guidelines, making raw material unavailable and re-categorizing medications making them “biologics” and therefore unattainable to your clients. making it harder and harder to get clients what they need.

Next, I believe that getting to know your neighbors and the community in which you serve is paramount to being successful in your field. Go to community events, go to the neighborhood clubs and get to know your people. Look to see how your best help and then let them know that you have the solution and how what you do works. If your business is online, decide on who you want to serve and give them something of value and then show them how you can help.

Lastly, find out who you can collaborate with. Make ways to uplift another business that aligns with your moral compass. Find out how that other business can help you serve more people as well. The more value you bring, the more you will be able to help others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rejuvenate.chu
• Instagram: @optimum_rejuvenation
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drsunaogilbert