Dr. Bridget Briggs is a family medicine physician trained in functional and integrative medicine. Her son Nolan was diagnosed with brain cancer at four, survived surgeries and strokes, and recovered. That experience drove her to focus on nutritional and natural healing approaches in her practice.
Chapters
I'm Dr. Bridget Briggs, and I am a family medicine doctor.
I'm actually also certified by the Institute
of Functional Medicine and the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.
I went to UCLA as an undergrad,
and I went to UCSD School of
Medicine in San Diego, which I love. I proceeded to enter into the field of obstetrics and gynecolog.
And midway through my training in obstetrics and gynecology, I did switch into family medicine.
And I am again, the mother of five children. So along my journey of being a
mom, I did have a little boy that was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 4.
And so I became the typical parent
and also the patient where understanding the
frustrations that many patients go through in the journey of medicine, which can be very frustrating.
And in this journey, I began to
look at natural remedies in integrational medicine
or integrative medicine, which is a very different type of medicine, unlike Western medicine. My son Nolan, at age 4, was
diagnosed with brain cancer.
I had to diagnose my own son.
We went through the journey of doctors
and brain surgeries and strokes and paralysis
and metastatic spread of the brain cancer.
So I, you know, literally my heart
goes out to the people or the
patients that live this life, and the fear, the paralyzing fear that occurs. And I felt empowered by knowledge of nutritional medicine. And so my son would swallow all
of his, you know, green drinks and
his little supplements, and we would walk
the halls of the oncology ward where
kids were getting their chemo, and parents would ask me, why does your kid have all his hair? And why is he sitting here doing his homework? He's still in kindergarten.
And so today Nolan's 18, and he's my miracle boy.
And he's changed me as a mother, and he's changed me as a physician.
He inspires me to keep functional medicine and nutritional medicine at the front of our practice. For this reason, I love anything that
is of the earth. I believe in the verse in the
Bible that says the healing of the
nations is in the leaves of the trees.
I think God gave us medicine in
the earth, and it's for us to
find that resource, tap into it, and use what the earth has for us to create health and balance.
