The greatest gift we can give ourselves is our health, and almost everything else in life depends on it. Healthcare transforms into a collaborative, patient-centered practice that prioritizes healing and prevention over symptom repression. Instead of only treating symptoms and searching for band-aid solutions, functional health takes a systems-based approach to addressing the underlying causes of chronic disease and barriers to wellness. Good nutrition and lifestyle medicine may support and improve almost every illness or symptom that exists. It’s not necessary for everyone to have the agility of a tightrope walker or the stamina of a competitive cyclist. You decide what level of functional health you require to lead a more fulfilling life. Meet, Kristen Poe, Owner and CEO of POE Holistic Health, who thinks the world would benefit from more functional health providers and modalities to keep up with the growing demand for functional healthcare and lifestyle medicine.
Accept the Flow
Initially, Kristen Poe had no intention of working in the functional medicine industry. After graduating from college, she had planned to attend medical school like her father. During her junior year of college, she was given the chance to work with a significant pharmaceutical company, which completely altered her life. She pursued a career in the pharmaceutical industry after graduating from college and earned an MBA in marketing. She also had a joint ownership interest in a beauty industry business. She acquired a wealth of knowledge that she has applied to her fascinating career. She feels that being a business owner and building a practice from scratch, with a western medical and business viewpoint has been tremendously beneficial. She feels it’s the best decision she could have ever made. Her only regret was that she didn’t act sooner. She believes the most important lesson she learned was that it was never too late to follow your passions and dreams.
A leap of faith towards growth
Kristen worked in the pharmaceutical industry, which was an interesting and fast-paced field that kept her on her toes. She traveled extensively, made lots of new friends, and won an award for being the best representative of the nation. Despite knowing she needed to change, she found it extremely challenging to take the risk because of her successful and fulfilling career. She made the decision to change her ways and adopt a healthy diet because she was dealing with poor health, nutrition, and lifestyle choices. She began a whole food diet and personal training regimen as part of her journey toward health and wellness. After a year, she soon began training for fitness competitions after a year. “I was fascinated to learn that just by eating well and choosing the right foods, I felt like a new person, not to mention achieving a physique I never thought would be possible.” Kristen says.
At this point, Kristen understood she had to stand back, consider what was truly important to her, and pursue her dreams. She knew she wanted to pursue a career in health and help patients improve their health and wellness. She began a protracted journey of learning functional medicine, nutrition, and naprapathy with the support of her husband and family. She opened her practice, Poe Holistic Health, in 2019 after nearly ten years of education and training.
POE Holistic Health
POE Holistic Health is a functional health and wellness practice that focuses on personalized Holistic Health Plans, holistic nutrition, optimal health and lifestyle management, natural chronic pain support through Naprapathy (connective tissue and fascia bodywork and Graston Techniqueã), supporting chronic conditions and illnesses, strengthening the immune system, gut health support, nutritional deficiency and environment intolerance lab testing, health optimization support, and other non-invasive personalized holistic approaches for health and wellness.
Abreast in the competition
According to Britannica, the definition of “competition” is “the act or process of trying to get or win something (such as a prize or a higher level of success) that someone else is also trying to get or win.” There is competition in every industry and almost every aspect of life. However, being in the health and wellness industry, there are so many people in this world, and there is truly so much business to go around. Kristen loves to partner with other practitioners, and being able to refer to other talented practitioners gives patients the best of everything for their care.
According to Kristen, the greatest way to stand out is to keep being true to who she is and what she loves, to prioritize excellent customer service, and to stay current with cutting edge technology and education. This includes providing quick and simple patient appointment scheduling, online information access, and first-rate customer service in person as well as via email and text messaging. She tries to live up to everything she supports and holds dear. As the face of POE Holistic Health, she places a high priority on feeling good, looking good, and living well in her own health and wellness journey.
In order to develop a personalized strategy that each patient is comfortable with, Kristen attempts to take the time to listen and collaborate with them. “I tell all of my patients and clients that I like to “put my money where my mouth is.” I would never make a recommendation or suggestion that I wouldn’t personally do for myself or my family.” Kristen recommends.
Core values of the company
The three guiding principles of POE Holistic Health are kindness, respect, and honesty. They may appear very straightforward and obvious, but Kristen believes they are essential to success. She thinks that being kind, honest, and respectful of others is always the right thing to do, regardless of the situation. Humility is additionally essential. She tries to be as flexible and open-minded as she can, and if it would help her patients and her practice, she would be willing to step outside of her comfort zone to make adjustments and handle situations in a different way. She is always willing to let her patients/clients know if she does not have an answer to something, and will always refer them to another doctor, provider, or service who may be able to assist them beyond the scope of what she and POE Holistic Health offer.
Post Pandemic Changes
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is among the biggest changes Kristen has observed, as is how exhausted many healthcare professionals are and how burdened the industry is. Kristen expresses her gratitude for Western medicine and all of its amazing providers. We are so lucky to have wonderful physicians, nurses, and specialists who show up every day and give their all to provide top-notch patient care. There will always be a need for medical services and care, which occasionally leads to a shortage of practitioners. In Kristen’s opinion, there will always be a need for more healthcare professionals to keep up with the rapidly growing and changing healthcare sector. Every area of technology was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, including healthcare.
The availability of telehealth services, appointments, and communication is now widely available to patients. In the future, Kristen sees a world where technology continues to advance, which will include patient services, treatments, medications, and procedures becoming even more state of the art and improved.
Expert Talk
Dr. Kristen Poe is the owner and CEO of her private practice, POE Holistic Health, in the Boston, Massachusetts area. She practices Functional Health and Naprapathy (expert in connective tissue and fascia). She is astounded by how extraordinarily busy the practice has become in just three years. She oversees daily operations, patient phone calls, emails, and enquiries in addition to acting as the primary functional health and naprapathic practitioner. In order to focus on her patients and their needs and to stay current and forward-thinking with education, technology, and services, she has begun to recruit consultants in several business sectors to assist with general day-to-day management.
Setting an example for women
Kristen believes that women are truly amazing and have changed the game in many different ways. Despite the fact that conditions for women leaders have significantly improved over the past few decades, statistics show that they are still not as frequently encouraged to assume leadership roles as their male counterparts. This contributes to the unequal power structures in the corporate landscape. There is still a leadership gender gap, even though women are climbing the corporate ladder quickly. Kristen believes it is important to consider the criteria that define a successful leader and to try to live by them every day rather than focusing on the qualities that may be lacking. However, Kristen believes it is crucial to prioritize work-life balance, empathy, free-thinking, multi-tasking and communication. Having a “sky’s the limit” attitude, wearing several hats, being versatile and flexible and pivoting when necessary are also extremely important. Remaining modest and keeping ego in check will also always serve a leader well. To set an example for her daughters and other female leaders, she does her best to embody these attributes, which are always a work in progress.
The Face Value of Vision
The vision of POE Holistic Health is to continuously offer cutting-edge services, goods, nutritional supplements, lab work, and nephropathic bodywork tools and techniques. The COVID-19 pandemic served as the impetus for Kristen to grow her virtual functional health consulting business both domestically and abroad. Her aim is to expand her patient and client base by providing up to date and advanced functional health tools and options. She is also working on several commercial endeavors, such as webinars, vitamins and other items, and lab work for functional health. She will continue to carefully listen to her patients’ needs, wants, and desires and to stay aware of anything that can help them on their path to future health and wellness.
Written by Steve Sanchez.
