My Interest In Health-Focused Nutrition

From my childhood onwards, I wanted to work in the sciences, especially as it related to food and chemistry. My teachers nurtured my scientific curiosity by encouraging me to experiment and gather data in order to draw my own conclusions. This carried over into my cooking hobby—later as an interest in health-focused nutrition. For example, I remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to pull out my mother’s recipe book and examine the ingredients for pancakes or cookies. Occasionally I would twist recipes by removing or adding spices or substitutions. Later, this interest developed into my role within my family as the cook, adjusting recipes or creating new ones as needed. In between all of my food adventures, I read everything I could and …show more content…
Lifestyle changes were prescribed along with a list of medications and other therapies. Over the span of a few months, medicine became the forefront of my reading, my writing, and my cooking. I performed literature reviews on foods, practices, and supplements and stopped using certain ingredients entirely. I saw the work as an opportunity to reduce the incidence of symptoms and bring a regular source of comfort and stability into the home. It was a small, but useful role I could fill while they worked with their health care team of insurers, doctors, and pharmacists on long-term treatment plans. After learning about medications and their relationships with food, I saw that my interests and work could go further with a professional pharmacy career. As a pharmacist, I may advise patients on food and medications, create health information for the public, market nutraceuticals, perform clinical research on diseases like those in my family, or become involved in patient advocacy—all goals I might pursue in the future. With all of pharmacy’s many possible career routes and intersections, I believe it has been the ideal career to pursue for the public, my family, and …show more content…
As a pharmacy associate, I had the opportunity to work with and observe pharmacists performing their retail roles through contacting doctors and insurers, checking the legal data, ordering shipments, advising on medications and supplements, performing vaccination campaigns, and filling scripts. I witnessed both the simple and complex dynamics of patients and their medications and learned how vital pharmacists could be to the health of a community, especially with regards to preventing infectious disease and sharing health information. I admired the mutual respect between pharmacists and their patients as well as the leadership skills of the managers. The pharmacy succeeded by focusing on the people—the patients, the technicians, and the health care professionals. When I worked for the Velocity BioGroup, I researched and presented market trends in pharmaceuticals to customers, as well as develop patient resources. Under the mentorship of the CEO, I also learned the importance of pharmacists to business and patient advocacy. I analyzed different health problems, patient populations, and treatments. For example, I researched Gulf War veterans who had developed gastrointestinal disorders during their years of service and how reduced opioid use as well as dietary changes could reduce symptoms. After working in genomic evolutionary medicine lab, I have also learned to be more effective