Angela Boatright, MSOM, A.P. L.Ac
I have been an Acupuncture Physician for 11 years specializing in women’s health and infertility. I have enjoyed being here in Lakeland for the last four years co-founding Natural Medicine Center of Lakeland.
I was a biology major at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton headed for a career in Western medicine when I met a wonderful TCM doctor who changed my life. I always tell people I had no idea how bad I felt until I started receiving acupuncture and herbal medicine and started feeling so great. In 1995, I began attending the National College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Orlando.
I immediately felt that Traditional Chinese Medicine was the best way for me to express my healing nature. I was intrigued by the thousands of years of knowledge and clinical practice I was being taught and how each individual patient was treated differently according to that person’s body constitution, environment and emotional health. I couldn’t think of a more all encompassing form of medicine.
I became interested in specializing in gynecology after studying with a wonderful teacher and doctor, Dr. Gong. Western medicine has a very short and incomplete history for women’s health and I felt that most women were frustrated with the care they were being given from their Western doctors, so I decided this would be my life’s focus.
After graduating in 1998, I went to Yantai, China to complete an internship working at Yu Hua Di Ding Hospital. It was fascinating to be in a hospital setting watching patients receive acupuncture, herbal prescriptions, herbal IV’s, massage therapy and diet therapy. I loved sitting in the Tui-Na (Chinese medical massage) Department and watching the babies and children receive their therapies. They were being cured of things like colic, diarrhea and pain with massage.
Returning to the states, I started a practice in Orlando with a chiropractor. I was treating every form of pain and headaches imaginable. Shortly after starting a practice, I began teaching Chinese medicine theory at my old school, now named Florida College of Integrated Medicine. Since teaching is one of my other passions, this was a perfect situation for me. After 2 years of teaching I was offered the Academic Dean of Oriental Medicine position.
During this time I had married and wanted to start a family. After two years of trying to get pregnant, I started paying attention to how far away from my TCM teachings about lifestyle my life had become. I was too busy working, exercising and teaching; my stress level was out the roof, I ate on the go and slept when I could. No wonder I couldn’t get pregnant. I knew something had to change.
Through my work at the college I met Carol Chandler, an acupuncture physician practicing in Lakeland. Carol asked me to join her practice and my husband had been offered a job in Lakeland so we decided to make the move. After moving I started receiving acupuncture regularly and taking my herbal prescriptions, paying close attention to my diet and managing my stress. Four months later I was pregnant. My pregnancy was great and I had a healthy girl. During my own struggle, I was noticing more and more women trying to conceive. Now I primarily specialize in infertility, working with couples to balance their own lives and make their dreams of being parents a reality.
I love living in Lakeland with my husband, Jay and two beautiful girls, Grace and Emma and of course our first child, Bohdi the Labrador. My passion is working at Natural Medicine Center of Lakeland.
