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

Alright, Eliza thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Have you ever experienced a times when your entire field felt like it was taking a U-Turn?

I can’t remember the exact moment I realized I was doing things backwards in my field but somewhere circa 2010ish I started to feel like my profession had it all wrong. I was working in well respected academic intensive care unit with the best of the best. I relished in being highly skilled at my job as an acute care nurse practitioner. But when the newness wore off and I began to settle into my role I really started to question everything I had learned about healthcare. Everyone was sick. People were dying daily. And the people outside of the ICU didn’t seem that far off. Growing lists of pharmaceutical medications and preventable illness seemed to be the norm. I initially just focused on myself. What could I do to improve my own health and wellness. And during that research I discovered the extreme amount of toxins and processed food that floods the American market. I transitioned to a wellness based approach professional in 2017 and have never looked back. My transition was slow…first with one step out of the ICU and one step in trying to figure out how to help people in the right way and just learning the basics of how to set up a business. But in 2017 I knew I had to choose. It was a big risk. Especially leaving a system that I was very entrenched in and that had dominated my life since the early 2000s. It also meant examining all the things that I knew were wrong with the current medical system and admitting that I was a part of it. Science is humbling. It’s constantly changing and you have to be willing to be wrong all the time. Seems like that is the same notion when you shift gears mid career. But I knew people’s lives depended on it. And I sure as heck didn’t get in the field to watch people die. I was supposed to be doing the opposite. Preventing sickness and death. So I knew a shift towards wellness and educating others on the importance of how to take care of your body wasn’t just a choice or a calling, it was an ethical necessity for me and my purpose.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an acute care nurse practitioner, certified wellness practitioner and currently back in school studying to become a functional diagnostic nutritionist. My career in healthcare began in 2003 in the ICU and I transitioned to a wellness based model of care officially in 2017. My biggest goal for clients is to help them focus on their biggest health struggle and I have an intentional focus on gut health. I would say the best thing that I do now that I didn’t before in healthcare is that I get to incorporate all aspects of healing..physical, mental, spiritual, emotional and psychological into my protocols. Healthcare tends to only deal with the physical and even then we do a really poor job with toxin exposure and nutrition. Wellness gets to focus on all these areas and really meets the holistic need of a client. I love to incorporate functional labs in my approach, I still love data but just as important are the clients goals and desires for health. I have been lucky enough to focus intensely on gut health the last 4 years and have developed a course for other providers to learn how to execute testing and protocols that are holistic in nature and help the client solve their biggest problem. One of the things that I have loved by working in this way is seeing incredibly changes in how the body can heal when you provide a multi system approach and how the client journey allows me to connect more with a person as they walk through their wellness journey.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

If I could go back in time I definitely would have chosen a profession that was more grounded and based in naturopathic medicine and the study of how to keep the body healthy and not just about disease.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Just loving people. Period. When you love people and want them to be well and have freedom in wellness they can feel it. For me the concept of scaling really just doesn’t appeal to me. I want to work with individuals who want to find freedom in wellness and get better. I am super committed to them and I expect the same commitment in their journey. Often times my clients have then become my dear friends. That says a lot about the journey. I think when you function in this way in any market you will succeed. You just have to always put people above profit.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theorganicsouth.com
• Instagram: @theorganicsouth
• Facebook: The Organic South
• Linkedin: Eliza Bacot
• Youtube: The Organic South

Image Credits
Libby Roessler (all other photos) Ali Wittorf (green jacket)