AFMC Practitioner Interview with Zoie Phillips: Trauma, Stress and Belief

Congratulations to SAFM student, Physician Assistant, and AFMC-certified practitioner, Zoie!  We are celebrating her success with a young patient suffering from multiple autoimmune diagnoses (ulcerative colitis and psoriasis), tinnitus, digestive complaints, low weight, anxiety, and depression.  

As you will hear in this excerpt of a conversation between SAFM’s Tracy Harrison and Zoie, autoimmunity is always multifactorial in origin. Conventional care for autoimmune patients often focuses exclusively on the physical aspects of the case and the forced modulation of the immune system to prevent it from further damaging the patient’s tissues. This can be a major blessing, but much too often, even the best conventional care does not support patients to go further – to actually experience disease regression and sustainable healing.

After excellent support from Zoie, this patient experienced amazing results including the resolution of most of his physical symptoms, improvements in mood, and a return to a vitality he did not think was attainable.

Zoie, while facilitating amazing relief from the physical manifestations of this young man’s disease, provided something no one had done for him before: a caring, healing presence, making the space for the patient to tell his story in order to be able to move forward from it. 

Before Zoie, no one explored this patient’s history beyond the physical body. No one connected his early life trauma to his poor state of health. Most importantly, Zoie was the first in a long line of practitioners who gave this young man hope that his disease was controllable and could be progressively resolved. A shining example of where and how the combination of Functional Medicine know-how and expert patient coaching really shines.

In Zoie’s own words: “The majority of his symptoms are resolved, which I really think is quite incredible and speaks to the resiliency of the human body. I think this is really important to touch on because for a lot of autoimmune patients, what they’re told is that this is necessarily a lifelong battle. And it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Here’s to a new paradigm in healthcare and Functional Medicine’s powerful answers to autoimmunity

This is one of a series of videos celebrating AFMC-certified practitioners and their case success stories.  If you’re inspired, check out other success stories like Amanda and Diane.