Hi! I’m Heewon! But as you have probably figured out by now, many friends have called me “Hee” throughout the years! I am a holistic nutritionist dedicated to helping you find the root of your health concerns so that you can express your greatest genetic potential and live your best life. I believe that proper nutrition is key to achieving wellness and am eager to help you find your genetic uniqueness and custom tailor your individual path to a vibrant life.
I believe that our struggles, when it comes to ridding our ailments and overcoming disease, is due to our lack of education, combined with a healthcare system that puts an emphasis on covering up symptoms with medication. Treating symptoms and compartmentalizing our body systems are the biggest failings of Western medicine. In my studies and experience, I’ve seen that the whole body is connected and many times the root issue doesn’t lie where you may experience symptoms. Depending on your unique genetics, ethnic background, traumas, diet, lifestyle and stress, people may experience the same symptoms due to different root causes and thus may require different remedies.
My Approach
At Healthee Life, we help you remove the “layers of your onion” in order to reach the root. With therapeutic supplements, a flexible whole food diet and by restoring the body’s own healing powers, you will experience freedom from your symptoms and a sense of wellness that you can maintain with minimal effort. Just as one can develop a condition or disease NOT in their genetics due to destructive lifestyle choices, we can help you express “good” genes and help you body to “ignore” and therefore not express the “bad” genes. Through this approach – Defy your DNA, we:
- Detoxify your body of what doesn’t belong in it (chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, etc);
- Nourish your body with what it needs (vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, etc); and
- Adapt your body to withstand the stresses of our daily lives and that of our environment (work, relationships, growing EMF’s and toxicities).
My Story
I grew up with my share of Mc Donald’s, Sizzler’s and ice cream. But I was mostly well-fed a traditional Korean diet consisting of rice, fish, miso soups, kimchee and veggies. I loved lettuce wraps, spaghetti, and kimchee stew; I wasn’t very picky in general but didn’t like cheese (or what I knew as cheese – Kraft American Singles!) or mayo or alfredo sauce. Far from my colleagues with hippie upbringings and also far from those who grew up on canned corn and pizza, I rarely caught colds and only missed one day of school during k-12 from illness (a short lived stomach bug). (I got the chicken pox and a few bouts of the flu during my vacations! ha!)
That was until my senior year of high school. I started experiencing debilitating menstrual cramps – self diagnosed by month two because the doctor my mom (who obviously never had cramps) took me to told me I was constipated! During that “time of the month”, I would be in intense pain, freezing cold, rolling on the floor, unable to eat or sleep and spent the better part of those days in bed wrapped around a heating pad. Pain killers only dulled the pain and I needed so many that I rarely used them. I missed mid-terms in college and was lying on the grass, in tears, on my college graduation day. This went on for 9 years.
During college, my stomach pains were more frequent – which I now attribute to irregular meals, lack of stress and overwork – and when I had extreme cramps, the indigestion got worse. I only dared to eat a few meals of porridge because the more my digestion had to work, the worse my cramps were. Once I learned where my deficiencies were and how to heal my stomach, I no longer have digestive pains.
I tried visiting a few doctors in college and each one had one solution: birth control pills. But my intuition told me it just wasn’t the answer. I felt that they had missed the point. I wasn’t trying to prevent birth. I wasn’t trying to mask my pain. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what was wrong in my body. It wouldn’t be for another 15 years, with the birth of my first son that I found out that I had severe endometriosis.
By this time though, I had already rid of those dreaded cramps. As I made my way through nutrition school and my internship, I learned to heal my digestion, detox heavy metals and balance my thyroid. By doing so, my indigestion was resolved; my energy soared; and nails started growing thicker and faster among other improvements. However, though the cramps decreased in degree, they weren’t gone. I worked with many women and helped them rid menstrual symptoms, including cramps, but I would still always experience a big dip in energy and have some degree of pain during my cycle. I had forgotten about one the of the main roots of illness that I dig for in my clients’ history. Injuries. I had forgotten about a pretty bad body-boarding injury I had a few months before the cramps had started. Once I cleared that injury, those cramps and all the associated symptoms have been gone!
First Encounter
A basic nutrition course my freshman year in college sparked a deep interest and intuition that food can heal. I had always been fascinated by food, and my interest grew blossomed that semester and I began to notice the effect of food on the way people feel. Not only that but how the same foods often affect individuals quite differently. I started to advocate what I knew to be healthy diet and lifestyle to friends and family and decided to seek and pursue a career in the world of holistic nutrition and natural healing. Since then, I was always in tune to the uniqueness in every individual and learned to translate that quality into each person’s diet and lifestyle.
In 2004, I started an internship where I gained more exposure in the field of clinical and functional nutrition and was trained as a nutritionist. Since then, I have been attending numerous seminars to broaden my insight, perspective and knowledge in order to better understand the intricacies of the human body. I graduated from The University of Bridgeport, with a Masters in Human Nutrition, while maintaining my role as a Senior Nutritionist at a nutrition and wellness clinic.
In 2009 I started Healthee Life, a nutrition and wellness clinic in Los Angeles, helping people with everything from simple lifestyle education to hormone imbalances, chronic digestive issues, auto immune challenges and other complex metabolic imbalances.
Through individual consultations, I teach healthy eating and lifestyle modifications in a fun and creative way, while helping individuals and families rid their ailments and lower their risk of common diseases found in today’s world. With my interest in herbs and the specific roles of different nutrients, my customized programs are thorough and truly aid individuals toward getting healthier. I believe that the many modalities, theories, traditions and approaches to health exist because they all hold validity, especially at different times in a person’s life. The synergistic way that nutrients work and the complementary way that different healing modalities work are so intriguing and vital to rapid healing. Thus, I make it a priority to be as integrative as possible without compromising standards of quality.
Many friends, family and clients have inspired and motivated me to start HealtheeLife.com as my instrument to help you make better choices each day. It is so easy to be unhealthy in our modern, fast-paced society but it is definitely possible, if you just take a little bit of time and effort to learn how. I hope that the tips, advice and recipes I share through HealtheeLife.com are an aid to helping you walk toward and maintain a healthee life.
Remember, good choices are contagious – so spread your healthee choices!
Love & Blessings,
Hee