I have known Dr. Kaisa Lopes for eighteen years, and I am not exaggerating when I say she has fed my family more lasagna than I can count. She pays me in gratitude the way some people pay in cash, and I have never minded one bit. But long before she was showing up at my house with a homemade meal, she was building one of the most fascinating practices in South Orange County, and I finally got to sit down with her and ask how it all started.
From Premed to Plant-Based Medicine
Kaisa's practice is called Phytology Medica, which comes from the Latin roots for the study of plants and the word for medicine. She grew up the way a lot of us did, in and out of doctors' offices for allergies and ear infections, living off of that bubble gum flavored amoxicillin every kid remembers. She started down the premed path because she genuinely wanted to help people. But everything shifted when a health crisis in college led her to an acupuncturist who changed her lab work without a single prescription. She was floored. That moment sent her down a completely different path, one that eventually connected back to something she did not even know about herself. Years later she learned her great grandmother had been a midwife and town herbalist. It turns out she was not discovering something new. She was returning to something that was already in her blood.
I love this part of her story because it is such a beautiful reminder that healing gifts often skip a generation or two before they find their way back home.
Root Cause Thinking Before It Was Trendy
Kaisa described the shift from linear Western thinking, where one symptom equals one diagnosis equals one treatment, to the circular, root based thinking of Chinese medicine, where everything in the body is connected. That was a hard adjustment for someone trained to ask for the double blind study before believing anything. But she made peace with a truth I live by every day in my own practice. Sometimes the person in front of you is suffering right now, and you cannot always wait for the research to catch up to the need.
She lived that truth personally with her daughter, giving her probiotics years before they were mainstream, simply because her daughter needed relief and the treatment was not going to hurt her. Her pediatrician eventually came around and recommended the very thing Kaisa had already been doing for seven years. That is the art of medicine working alongside the science of it, and it is exactly the kind of practical wisdom I want more people to trust in themselves.
What Thermography Can Tell You Years Before a Diagnosis
One of my favorite parts of this conversation was hearing Kaisa explain thermography, a safe, FDA approved thermal imaging test that looks at your organs, spine, and even your teeth and gums. She shared a story about a patient whose thermography showed inflammation in his prostate region fifteen years before he was diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer. Because of the early warning, he avoided chemotherapy and surgery altogether.
That is the kind of preventive information that could change how we approach health, if only more people knew it existed. Kaisa and I talked candidly about why tools like this stay on the margins. It usually comes down to insurance coverage and the limits of what a medical license allows a provider to recommend. But when patients understand what a test is actually telling them, they can make informed decisions long before a problem becomes a crisis.
A Personal Journey to Blair Technique
Kaisa's own path to Blair technique started with headaches in her mid-thirties that would not resolve, even after trying another style of chiropractic care. A mutual patient introduced her to me, and that appointment ended years of headaches for good. She has since referred her entire family, her husband, her parents, her in-laws, her kids. I still remember standing at her son's graduation party and realizing half the room was made up of my own patients because of her.
What moved me most, though, was talking about her youngest daughter, Gabrielle, who was born at twenty six weeks and lives with quadriplegic cerebral palsy and a complex health history. Gabrielle cannot walk or talk, but she communicates in her own clear way, and every time I give her a gentle C1 adjustment, her whole body visibly relaxes. Her hips and feet align, her face lights up, and she coos with what can only be described as relief. Kaisa and I both believe deeply that a fragile nervous system is not a nervous system without hope. Assessing the structure and watching the physiology change over time is proof that healing is possible for anyone, no matter how complicated their story looks on paper.
Two Practices, One Community
Kaisa and I do not do the same work, but we have built something special by trusting each other with the people we love most. I send her the patients who need her expertise in nutrition and acupuncture, and she sends me the ones who need their nervous system regulated through Blair technique. Watching our two worlds elevate the health of our little corner of the world has been one of the true joys of my career.
If you or someone you love is dealing with something that has not responded to the usual approach, I hope this conversation reminds you that there is always another root to explore.
Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Kaisa Lopes on the Well Connected Podcast: Live Your Life in Alignment. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Find Dr. Kaisa Lopes at phytologymedica.com, on Instagram @phytologymedica, or on Facebook at Phytology Medica. Find us at wellconnectedchiro.com.
