2. Dr. Anikó's Story - A Pediatrician’s Journey Beyond Western Medicine

In this deeply personal and inspiring episode of Nourished, Dr. Anikó shares the unconventional path that led her from childhood stomach pain to becoming a double board-certified Integrative Pediatrician and Postpartum Specialist. Her story isn’t just about medicine, it’s about healing, identity, and rediscovering the body’s innate wisdom.

Through raw reflections, Dr. Anikó walks us through the lived experiences that Western medicine alone couldn’t explain, the life-changing power of yoga, nature, nutrition, and how integrative medicine became her calling. 

You’ll hear how her own struggles with digestive issues, anxiety, postpartum depression and burnout shaped the way she practices medicine today; with curiosity, compassion, and a toolkit that goes far beyond prescriptions.

If you’ve ever felt dismissed by traditional healthcare, curious about a more holistic path or wondered how to integrate both Western and non-Western practices into your family’s wellness, this episode will nourish your spirit and empower your next steps.

Episode Highlights:
- Why Western medicine didn’t fully answer Dr. Anikó’s childhood health struggles
- The first time she heard the diagnosis “IBS” and why it only scratched the surface
- How moving to Europe shifted her digestion, lifestyle, and self-awareness
- The unexpected power of Iyengar yoga and pranayama on her nervous system
- Discovering macrobiotics, herbal remedies, and the healing power of food
- Why her integrative medicine elective changed everything
- What postpartum depression revealed about support, identity, and real healing
- How nature, community, and curiosity continue to guide her own healing.

Connect with Dr. Anikó:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.aniko/

Website: https://www.draniko.com/

Thank you for listening to Nourished with Dr. Anikó!

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Disclaimer:
The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast.

Transcript

Dr. Anikó: [00:00:00] So a question that I get a lot, and I ask myself probably not nearly as much as I should, but something that's worth touching back into is, how did I get here?

Right? Because not everybody is a physician, and not everybody who's a physician is an integrative physician and not who everybody who's an integrative physician also does. Postpartum work and not everybody who's an integrated physician who does postpartum work also [00:01:00] is a pediatrician. So I think it, it is worth the trip down memory lane to talk about how I got here and I.

I think the first most obvious answer is that, you know, I was lucky enough to not have the most impactful thing in my health be Western medicine. 'cause typically if you are super impacted by Western medicine early in your life, I. It's because something pretty devastating or chronic has happened to you, right?

So maybe you are a survivor of childhood cancer and you are saved, uh, by chemotherapy and radiation and surgery. Or maybe you had a life-threatening infection or sepsis and you were saved with, you know, the. Judicious and immediate use of antibiotics, or maybe your mom had an emergency C-section and that allowed you to survive.

So I in no [00:02:00] way ever, ever want to discount or discredit Western medicine because it plays a massive role, especially in acute, significant traumatic, severe. Situations. And also it plays an amazing role in public health. So I love western medicine, but in my lifetime, the things that impacted me the most and my own health journey kind of went outside of the.

The boundaries and the borders of Western medicine because I was a kid who grew up with lots and lots of stomach aches, and as I got older, they just got more severe and I don't really remember. Anyone really asking me like what I was eating or how much I was eating or if I was eating or when I was eating, which seems to me kind of a no brainer when you're talking about stomach pain.

And I feel like it was [00:03:00] sort of tossed about that I was kind of a more stressed out kid or like a type A kid. I was certainly a high achiever, always wanted to be a doctor. I think that's really. It's an amazing thing to think about now because first I wanted to be a vet before I could even say the word, I called it vegetarian.

And I wanted to go to Harvard Medical School because my oldest sister went to Harvard and somebody at some point said, you know, Harvard doesn't have a vet school. And I was like, oh, well, I guess I'll be a doctor then. And then it was completely natural and normal to me that I was like, well, obviously I'm gonna be a pediatrician because even as a child.

I loved younger kids and babies. Like I remember being about nine years old and, uh, my friend's neighbor, they had a newborn and I remember we all went out to eat and I just wanted to hold the baby the whole time. And she would fuss and I would bounce her. And I remember the mom just being like, can she come home with me?

Like, this [00:04:00] is amazing, you know? And I. Didn't really understand the big deal. I just wanted to be around the baby. I didn't see it took much until much, much later in my life to see like what a godsend that is. To go out to a meal and have somebody who is so excited to be with your baby. Take care of your baby.

So I was always gravitated towards taking care of younger kids. I eventually became like a camp counselor and I was very invested in my campers, just really cared about them, really felt like an older sister. I really, I remember 'cause we would go on this, like these, like one overnight, one night backpacking trips.

And I remember a couple of my campers didn't bring their water and I, without thinking about it, gave them my water. And I couldn't have been more than 15 years old or something. So I already had that sense of responsibility of taking care of others. So anyway, wanted to be a doctor, was always geared that way.

Was always very academic, [00:05:00] doing what I needed to do. But I always had these stomach aches, like I said, from a very early age. And interestingly too, and now that I'm thinking about it, I also had sweaty palms always at school. They're starting to sweat as I'm saying this. Pretty wild. Just that wonderful.

You know, psychosomatic doesn't mean that it's not happening, it just means that your brain is at the center of it anyway. Just now with my adult eyes, I can see that these can be signs of anxiety or just at least a heightened revving of my nervous system, and the stomach aches just didn't really go away and neither did the sweaty palms, which in medical speak is called hyperhydrosis.

And they just kind of kept getting worse. And I remember I went to college and there were a few times that I would call my mom and say, you know, my stomach hurts so bad, I don't know what's going on. And she said, go to the emergency room. I mean, what's shes supposed to say, she's hundreds of miles away.

And so, and it continued well into my, I guess my early twenties. And I remember. I had a [00:06:00] friend and I finally had health insurance 'cause I was off of my parents' health insurance. And at the time the only way you could get health insurance was if you had a job and you were lucky enough to have a job that provided health insurance.

So I finally had a job that provided health insurance because I was doing some research and, and one of my colleagues actually really stood up for the group and said, if we're gonna be in these. Medical environments exposed to these potential, you know, contagious illnesses, we need to have health insurance.

And so we got it. He got it for us. And with that health insurance, I was able to go to the doctor and describe to her, and she was a resident, which I, I knew it at the time, but I didn't know what it meant. But she was a resident, so she was, she was green, but very, very enthusiastic. And she knew her stuff and she was the first person to say, I think you have IBS, irritable Bowel Syndrome.

And she recommended fiber. And at some point in there I remember seeing somebody who recommended proton pump inhibitor, [00:07:00] even though I had never complained of heartburn. But you know, this is kind of how we're running into some of the limitations of western medicine, right? Proton pump inhibitors and antacids and all that kind of thing can be helpful for some people, but it was not helpful for me.

I actually never even ended up taking that, which I'm thankful for now. But I tried to take fiber and it just kind of made me feel bloated and it really wasn't doing anything good for me. So that was, that was step one is sort of getting to a potential diagnosis of something and an idea that my system worked a little bit differently.

And I was already 22 by this point, so now we're 20 years into my life, and this is just the first step of figuring out what's going on with me, or at least what helps me. So I kind of abandoned the fiber. It was one of the orange ones, and it just didn't taste good and it didn't help me. And then I was living in Europe.

And I remember a friend of a friend visited and we were talking about health and I was [00:08:00] this, the story about digestion came up and she said, oh yeah, that's something that's going on with me too. And I take this other kind of cilium supplement that's just pure cilium. It's not flavored, basically tastes like sawdust, which it doesn't taste bad, and I just take it with some juice.

And so I tried that. And it really helped. So now we're at the point where, okay, here's the first thing that helps. But looking back, I will say that moving to Europe also helped. I didn't have the same kind of sort of abdominal attacks, those emergent acute pain. I would go through periods where I just felt like I couldn't eat anything without having a stomach ache, but it wasn't as severe as it had been for me growing up.

So just that food change I think to be in Europe versus the US was different and helped my system and I was in a country that my ancestry is from, so that my family's from. So that also makes some intuitive sense. Eating more along the lines of the culture that I [00:09:00] biologically suited to and that I evolved from was helpful for me.

So I did that. It started to feel better. And then a friend of mine who is so great, I have not seen her in so long, but she introduced me to yoga and I didn't know it at the time, but it was Iyengar yoga and the woman who taught it and her son had gone to India multiple times. They were really serious.

We had two and a half hour classes with a lot of pranayama and breathing exercises. And both the yoga itself and the pranayama associated with it, and the fact that the breath regulation was regulating my nervous system, I had no idea this was happening, but I started to feel better. And not that in a way that I notice, but in a way that I look back and I think, oh yeah, that was another turning point in my life and my health and my wellbeing.

And another way that it helped was that my eating was just so all over the place in some ways when I was younger, like forgetting to eat [00:10:00] or like eating too much or eating at the wrong times or eating really late. And because I was taking these yoga classes in the evenings and there were. Quit long. I wouldn't want to eat for a certain amount of hours or like an at least an hour before class, so I would have to eat like a reasonable lunchtime and maybe like a snack, and then afterwards I would eat a reasonable dinner.

But just the act of doing yoga sort of regulated my appetite and had me craving different things as well. And so that was win number three, right? So we have the, maybe four, I guess we have IBS diagnosis. We have the fiber, we have the change in food from being in a different country. And now we have the yoga and the pranayama, which again, I wasn't connecting all the dots at the time.

And then it feels like it was almost an overnight decision. But once I was in medical school, I just thought, I just want to eat food. That's good for [00:11:00] me. And also I was in Europe, and not that they don't have fast food or it's just not, at the time, wasn't such an established part of the culture to grab a bag of chips or something like that.

And also the produce wasn't, it wasn't like all the different kinds of produce were available at the same time. So I was having to learn how to incorporate things that I had not really. Been using that much in my, in my diet before. So I started eating red cabbage and I started eating beets and like grading beets, like raw beets, which I had never done before, and started paying more attention to how I felt after I.

After I ate certain meals, and at some point somebody gave me like a macrobiotic cookbook, but it was more than a cookbook. It was like a lifestyle book. And then there I was in Europe trying to find these like macrobiotic food items, some of which were like really rooted in the Japanese culture. There was like kombu seaweed and ume boshi [00:12:00] plums.

And then I discovered that, oh gosh, when I have those periods when I just can't eat anything. Making a hot tea with Uma Boshi plums, those pickled plums really helps me. So sour helps me. That pickled flavor helps me. It was another discovery. Another discovery was, wow, those periods where I can't eat anything.

It's funny how it always happens. During my finals, everything that was super life-changing for me was outside of the realm of Western medicine, but it was happening at such a snail pace. And then while I was still in medical school, I was looking at different electives and I had not really named it as integrative medicine ever, but I was just searching for different sort of holistic medicine programs.

I didn't really know the right name for it, but I came up on the University of Arizona, which was Andrew Weill's program, and I had heard of Andrew Weill, [00:13:00] and it just sounded so. Interesting to me and meaningful to me and everything that was written about it, I just really connected to. And so when I came into my residency program in the United States.

I came in with a printout of this and said, I wanna do this elective, and they said, sure, no problem. We did run into some sort of scheduling bumps, but I ended up being able to do the elective and it was a month long, but it felt a lot longer in a wonderful way just because so many profound things were happening.

And I remember going there and I loved residency. I loved medical school, I loved residency. I loved everything I was learning. I loved being in the hospital. I didn't love the schedule per se, and how tired I was. But everything that I was learning, all the experiences I was having were so relevant and important.

I mean, you're literally saving lives. At the beginning, you're alongside of people saving lives, and then you're saving people's lives with the skills that you have. But the hospital environment and the residency [00:14:00] environment, it was very high stress, and everybody was so overstretched. A lot of the people I worked with had kids, and you're not able to spend the time with your kids that you want, and you're working so, so much and.

I will say it over and over again that people who work in healthcare and doctors are some of the greatest humans that I have ever met, because nobody goes that I know anyway. I'm sure there's some exceptions, but for the most part, nobody goes into medicine who isn't there because at the end of the day, they want to help people.

They want to heal the world, and there's a lot of truth to the wounded healer, which is work that I did much later. But it's an amazing group of humans that are truly doing their part to make the world a better place. But despite this, the system is often not treating them especially well. [00:15:00] And a lot of the people that I worked with just.

Seemed sad and un unhappy. I don't know if sad is the right word, but they just seemed unhappy. And so when I went to Arizona and I met everybody in the integrative medicine program, I felt so inspired and invigorated because I thought, oh, like this is something that I can. Look up to, like, these are people that I would want to model myself after, not to be exactly like them, but they seemed balanced.

And they seemed energized and they had vitality and, and I just hadn't seen that much. I. In the hospital setting, and these doctors were working in hospital settings. They were the heads of departments. They were the heads of working in the ICU. I mean, it's not like I was comparing ICU attendingsto shamans although I did meet shamans too, and they were amazing, some of whom were also MDs, but it was [00:16:00] comparing apples to apples.

But they're. Presence and their wellbeing was vastly different. And so that was another aha moment of, okay, this can be done in a different way, in a way that's nourishing to the practitioner in a way that is potentially more nourishing to the world. I. And so I did that elective and it was absolutely life changing, and that was when I realized that this was something that I could actually specialize in because it was a way that I was just practicing anyway.

I had people coming into my clinic as a resident and I was asking them about what they were eating, and I was asking them about how they were sleeping, and I asked them about their dreams, and I remember parents just looking at me in a funny way saying like, why is this? Physician asking my kid about their dreams, but I was just very comprehensive because ultimately integrative medicine is about what are the things that human beings need to.

Live their best lives. And it's [00:17:00] not just though. It is. And that's why I'm so adamant about, not, disrespect isn't the right word, but not undervaluing or in any way demeaning, conventional and western medicine because it is lifesaving. It provides such a huge service. It is such an important part of the toolbox, but it's just one part of the toolbox.

And like I said, my path did not lead me. Health wise to a place where western medicine was the game changer for me. It was all these other things. So go to Arizona, do this elective, and then I finished residency. I. Became chief resident, got pregnant, my chief year, had an amazing little baby and everything was good.

And I went back to work and I was working at a private clinic that was primary care, but I was doing it my integrative way. And then I did a fellowship in [00:18:00] integrative medicine had another baby, was pretty, felt pretty confident, not just being a pediatrician, but having already had a baby. I felt pretty confident that everything would be good and easy, and things with the baby were actually quite easy.

That was a pretty, pretty easy baby as far as babies are concerned, but I was not. I was not okay, and I had a really rough experience with postpartum depression, and then the pandemic happened and I remember just feeling relief. Oh gosh, good. I can retreat from the world. I don't even know. Where I belong, which is not an uncommon experience postpartum.

Even if you're not having pma. Ds, which is peri mood and anxiety disorders, or perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, that's a very normal like identity crisis a little bit when you have a baby, because you bond with this baby, you become a dyad. You're not who you used to be anymore, and that can be a [00:19:00] wonderful, awakening, nourish, supported, spiritual experience.

But if you're all alone. It can be a crisis and it can be really, it can be a catastrophe in some situations. And so I was lucky enough and privileged enough to have a lot of support. And after coming through that and then, yeah, like I said, COVID happened and then as I was coming out of my depression, but certainly not fully out of it, but I was peeking out of the cave enough to be interested and, and capable of holding and seeing what was going on around me.

And people started to reach out to me. About postpartum or someone would. Email me or call me, my friend's having a baby. And she had a question about vaccinations or baby wearing or whatever it happened to be because they know as a pediatrician, and they knew me as a human, so they trusted me and we had a relationship, and I developed this unofficial cohort of new moms or expectant moms that I was talking to, and I [00:20:00] found that work to be so rewarding and healing for me.

That's what I wanted to do. And that's how I got into postpartum consulting and, and I started my practice that was just basically online coaching to begin with. And I got trained in perinatal mental health, connected with this wonderful organization called Postpartum Support International and other perinatal providers in New Orleans where I live most of the year.

But then like mom's will, they would call me about kind of postpartum issues and then say, okay, yeah, but I'm not really, I'm not really wanting to pursue that right now, but I see you're an integrative pediatrician. And interestingly, the people that I was connecting with were like slowly opening that door back for me to get back into clinical medicine and seeing patients in real life, laying my hands on people.

And of course, I wasn't doing that during COVID, but also [00:21:00] now. Being now trained in integrative medicine board certified in integrative medicine, that was when I decided that's what I want to practice. Then I'm gonna do integrative medicine and I'm gonna do it as a consultant. Meaning, just like you would if you saw your primary pediatrician and they said, oh, you should see ENT.

For this sinus or tonsil or whatever it is, issue. If you were to say, I wanna do a deeper dive into preventative, I'm interested in maybe talking about some supplements or nutraceuticals or whatever it is, lifestyle medicine or probiotics or whatever it is that is outside of the boundaries of western medicine training, you would see me.

So your primary care pediatrician would refer you or you could refer yourself to see me, and we would do a deep dive into either preventative or do like a wellness check, but from an integrative lens, or if we're dealing with a chronic condition, it could be non-Western [00:22:00] approaches to treating this chronic condition again.

If I think that an ENT needs to be involved, or if I think this western medicine modality is going to be the best, I will a hundred percent recommend that I don't have loyalty in into either side. I don't consider it to be something of sides. I think of it as just tools in your toolbox, and they are all equally valuable.

But you wanna use the best tool for the job, and I certainly want to use the tool that I think will give the most benefit and the one that will have the least risk and least side effects. But sometimes the best tool is a Western medicine tool, so I will not hesitate to recommend that. And you know. To use that in myself and in my family.

And in my kids, absolutely. One of the most profound health experiences I've had in my family was a thousand percent Western medicine. Western medicine saved the life of one of my children, so I love western medicine, but I also love finding [00:23:00] all the different ways to support health, no matter like what you call it or where it's from.

So continuing along my health journey, I started seeing a Chinese herbal doctor who specializes in Chinese herbs. 'cause just 'cause you're an acupuncturist doesn't mean you're an herbalist. And knowing more, because I had learned so much about this in my integrative fellowship, I'd learned about Ayurveda.

I'd learned about Chinese medicine, you know. Enough to be able to use a little bit of it in my practice, but I'm not an herbalist. So if I were to want to refer somebody to use Chinese herbs in a much more individualized and personalized way, then I would refer somebody to an herbalist. seeing an herbalist.

Getting acupuncture regularly and seeing the impact that it had on my digestion, and then starting to notice, like, huh, as I start meditating more regularly, wow. My hyperhydrosis and my sweating has really stopped and my digestion is so much better. And gosh, like I'm just such a much better parent. And wow.

When I spend time in [00:24:00] nature, I just feel so much more balanced, like all these things. That, you know, I'm not mad about it, but I guess what I'm saying is what drives me now is I don't want you to have to wait until you're in your forties or fifties to find what is healing for you, because it's not gonna be the same for everybody.

But I will say there are some things that humans just respond to. All humans respond to nature. That would've been nice to be. Told directly in my younger years so I could harness it and use it and access it. 'cause I remember being a kid, I remember planning out my 16th birthday. This a hundred percent did not happen.

By the way. I had this imagining that I don't even think I communicated to my parents, but I said, I wanna go camping. I wanna get a four runner. I a hundred percent did not get a four runner. I got my grandma's old Pontiac, but that was fine. I'm so grateful that I got a car at all to share with my grandma.[00:25:00] 

But I remember saying, I wanna get a four runner, and then I wanna go camping with a couple friends because I feel like when I go camping, I'm 15 years old saying this, I feel like I recharge. I don't know what it is about camping, but I recharge what I'm camping. How wonderful would it have been to set me up when I'm younger as.

Somebody who knows that nature is a resource, and that's just one example, right? There are so many more. So now I'm still practicing. I see a few patients. Few clients because I do put a lot of time into each of my patients and each of my clients. And if I take on too many, then I can't practice the medicine that I know is my best medicine and I can't offer what I know is my best gift.

But I also don't wanna hoard this information. And also in this day and age, when it seems like objective [00:26:00] scientific information is becoming a little harder to come by and also harder to know who's a reliable source. I don't wanna, I don't wanna hog this information I, and I don't want it to just be for the few people who live in New Orleans who do see me.

And so this is. I feel like this is my offering, not just my own experiences and expertise and knowledge, but also conversations with other people, because ultimately to me, healing work and self-healing and self-care and all of that. It doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens in community. So all of this work that I've done on myself, all of this education that I've had, all of this work that I do with my patients and clients, it's meant to get us to a point where we are healing ourselves and our worlds and our communities together.

So that is my hope for this, is that people who listen to this, it will be part of, [00:27:00] or maybe inspiration for a piece of. A building block for your own healing journey and your own healing work that then we carry out into the world to heal our world. 

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