Dr. Sarah Yoakam
Three days after completing her fellowship in Integrative Medicine with Andrew Weil, MD, Sarah woke up with a full-blown case of lupus. She was suffering from swollen, red, hot joints, a malar rash (also know as a butterfly rash), and many other symptoms she wasn’t banking on.
At the time, there was no specific integrative roadmap in how to treat lupus and it is still considered somewhat of a “mystery illness” by conventional doctors. As a patient traveling on this journey, Dr. Yoakam realized the medications could only get her so far.
In addition, the medications seemed even scarier than the disease with their long list of side-effects! This is what prompted her to research and create her own treatment plan with the full intention of “doctor heal thyself.”
Today, she is glad to report that she feels amazing and is now able to resume her work and many of the activities that were off-limit before!
Now, her passion lies in treating patients much like herself. She especially loves the rheumatology population, those patients suffering with autoimmune arthritis. She thought she had learned and understood suffering as a medical trainee, but it wasn’t until she hobbled the path of a patient, that she realized doctors can’t begin to imagine this type of suffering from medical training alone.
Three days after completing her fellowship in Integrative Medicine with Andrew Weil, MD, Sarah woke up with a full-blown case of lupus. She was suffering from swollen, red, hot joints, a malar rash (also know as a butterfly rash), and many other symptoms she wasn’t banking on.
At the time, there was no specific integrative roadmap in how to treat lupus and it is still considered somewhat of a “mystery illness” by conventional doctors. As a patient traveling on this journey, Dr. Yoakam realized the medications could only get her so far.
In addition, the medications seemed even scarier than the disease with their long list of side-effects! This is what prompted her to research and create her own treatment plan with the full intention of “doctor heal thyself.”
Today, she is glad to report that she feels amazing and is now able to resume her work and many of the activities that were off-limit before!
Now, her passion lies in treating patients much like herself. She especially loves the rheumatology population, those patients suffering with autoimmune arthritis. She thought she had learned and understood suffering as a medical trainee, but it wasn’t until she hobbled the path of a patient, that she realized doctors can’t begin to imagine this type of suffering from medical training alone.
From the physical pain and loss of function to coping with marriage and family issues during illness, and comforting fertility issues, workplace issues, and sleep problems… she was amazed how little medical school had prepared her for these once she had become a patient.
It is now her mission to use her own past hardships to forge a new path for patients, by getting to the root cause of what sickened them in the first place. Only by addressing all contributors to the illness can we begin to heal.
