My Background

Originally from West Virginia, I left at 18 to pursue undergraduate studies in Providence, Rhode Island at Brown University.

I graduated in 2013 on a pre-med track with a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Immediately continuing into grad school I moved to Asheville, NC to pursue a professional degree in classical Chinese medicine.

I graduated in 2017 after four years of study in holistic medicine.

Immediately following this I moved to Brooklyn, NY and got my first professional licensure from New York state to practice medicine.

After two years in the city I’d had quite enough and was ready to return to Asheville to continue my practice.

In 2019 I opened Asheville Holistic Acupuncture, where I’ve seen patients ongoing ever since.

Although I employ many different treatment methods, the longer I’ve been in practice, the more I’ve found myself leaning on dietary interventions as a primary intervention.

In the summer of 2025 I created White Oak Holistic Nutrition — A practice where I can dive deeply into dietary modification as a treatment method for my patients.

What Do We Treat?

Dietary modification is foundation for altering all aspects of the physical body. The foods we consume are the catalyst and limiting factor for physical development and function.

A healthy body requires the input of three basic resources:

• Good food,

• Plenty of sunlight, and

• Clean air.

From these three sources we manufacture flesh and blood, bones, skin, nerves, and all of the other essential bits that make us into the creatures we are. And from these three sources we derive the vital energy which animates the body to live.

Modification of the diet not only offers the capacity to treat minor disorders, but it acts as a profound and direct intervention at the level of the physical body - one which can alter the very fabric and function of every cell. Diet builds the body and diet can be its ruin. Major states of disease may be cured with nothing more than strict dietary observance.

For anyone experiencing a disease state, do not disregard the diet. Do not walk the course of the healing without having an intentional diet plan to provide a strong foundation along the way.

How We Operate

Contemporary training for mainstream dietitians is primarily rooted in chemistry. Because Allopathic medicine is a branch of chemistry and pharmaceutical technology, this is only natural.

While chemical composition is an excellent method for the conquest and understanding of the physical world, it has some shortcomings when used in isolation within the context of medicine.

The human being may broadly be regarded as having three bodies:

• The Physical Body,

• The Energy Body (also called the astral body or the feeling body), and

• The Mental Body.

The physical body is just that. The energy body is the realm of what is called the Qi in Chinese medicine, and it is the body which accounts of the bioelectric field of an individual, within which is experienced emotional states and any of the various psychological states which are rooted in a feeling experience. The mental body is the subtle field within which is experienced the psychological phenomenon of consciousness, thought, dreams, and abstract experiences of the subtle realms which may be called strata of the heavens.

Chemistry, as it relates to diet and nutrition in all but the most esoteric circles of modern medicine, allows for the contextualization of food as a conglomerate of chemicals which perform various functions within the body, some of which we’ve mapped and many of which we haven’t.

My functional model of nutrition takes into account chemical composition when relevant, but much more often I appraise food from the traditional perspective of its energetic action on the body. Because I diagnose according to classical Chinese medicine I regard food according to its ability to rectify pattern disharmonies as understood from this model.

Food is categorized by temperature (warming or cooling) and taste. Each of the five flavors of food have a different action within the body and an affinity for a different organ system.

Bitter Foods - are cooling and direct the qi to move downward in the body. They have a relationship with sedating the heart.

Sweet Foods - are moistening and smooth the qi. They have a relationship with nourishing the spleen and pancreas.

Spicy Foods - are stimulation and incite movement in the qi. They have a relationship with decongesting the liver and lungs.

Sour Foods - are stabilizing and consolidating for the qi. They have a relationship with sedating the liver.

Salty Foods - are heavy and cause the qi to become denser. They have a relationship with nourishing the kidneys.

In this way the five flavors are the foundation for understanding the energetics of food and the launching point from which all foods are categorized within Chinese medical theory. According to your disharmonies a food plan will be developed to correct imbalances.