Dr. Daniel Metzger, DACM, L.Ac., IFMCP

My journey to integrative medicine has been long and winding. I initially started my undergraduate studies in biology and was pre-med. I was always interested in health and helping people live healthy lives. However, as I got deeper into my studies, I began to feel as though conventional medicine wasn’t quite the right fit for me. I completed my undergraduate degree in biology but also pivoted to chemical engineering. I worked as a chemical engineer for several years. However, my passion for health grew. I opened up to medical approaches outside of the mainstream. I read a book on Chinese medicine and was excited to find that it delves deep into uncovering root causes of disease. The more research I did, the more I felt a passion, and it wasn’t long before I enrolled in the master’s program at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chinese medicine has helped me to approach health by treating the person and not the disease, by truly listening to what a person is experiencing, and to investigate the root cause of illness.

It wasn’t until I was in my private practice that I became familiar with functional medicine and its benefits. It seemed a perfect synthesis of my skills in uncovering the root cause of disease and my background in modern science. Its approach toward optimizing function based on the laboratory tests allows me to help people with laser-like precision and is an essential tool that takes out a lot of guesswork. Functional medicine has enhanced my Eastern medicine foundations and contributed to many clinical successes.