SALUD!

I am a physician assistant who graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2008 with a Master's Degree in Health Science and Physician Assistant Studies. I received my Bachelor's Degree from Temple University in Anthropology, where I learned about culture and the ill effect that industrialization has had on the health of modern people versus the benefits a primitive diet and active lifestyle had on indigenous peoples, but it wasn't until 2009 when I moved to Costa Rica that my medical background and what I learned in anthropology about human health and history began to merge and turn a light bulb on of what medicine is, and what it should be.

 

In 2009 I moved to Costa Rica Central America and spent 3.5 years there. I informally studied the culture, language and natural, whole diet of many of the people there. The diet is rich in wild, colorful produce found in the jungles and vast farmlands. One can walk through a mountain pasture and see rice growing and cows grazing (grass fed as opposed to grain) and can drive down a highway and see beans growing on the side of the road among a sea of mango and coconut trees. Interestingly, while I was there many US researchers were in the jungles of Costa Rica searching for plants that could be used as medical treatments. I began to wonder if the unmodified food and plant sources that were being researched in the jungles of Costa Rice were not available in various forms in nature all over the world; and were cures to disease indeed found in nature?

 

Costa Rica is where I developed a passion to learn how the body can heal itself through proper nutrition and exercise.  A few years before I moved I had been struggling with tiredness and irritable bowel problems, which I found was related to my high stress lifestyle and my poor diet.  I switched to a vegetarian diet for a few years and my bowel issues completely resolved but I was still tired a lot.  It wasn't until moving to Costa Rica and learning how to eat a more balanced and nutritious diet comprised of foods that grew right from the land, and taking advantage of the nutrients that can also be found in their seeds and skin, did I realize that modern medicine is missing the vitally important patient education about food which is the key component to human health.

 

Many foods in their whole, unmodified, organic state are no longer easily accessible and free for all to find, but the answer to many diseases is in the trees and plants that nature has provided for us.  We can learn to work with what we have and maximize the healing power in the nutrients of the foods that we do have.

 

There is defiinitely a place in our health and survival for Western medicine, and I do still practice medicine, but my passion and primary goal is to help you prevent disease, maintian good health and heal your body- with food.

 

Salud!

Tulani A Johnson MS PA-C

Health Coach