Making Food Your Medicine

About Dr. AvaNirvana

I learned to prepare food out of necessity to feed my siblings and  other young children in the neighborhood when I was barely in double digits myself. For the first couple years I made a lot of pasta marinara, burritos, quesadillas and toaster oven pizzas then I got invited into the kitchen at the bar where my mom cocktailed. These tattooed misfits invited me into their world and taught me how to use a knife, a deep fryer and everything on their bar menu. As my world continued to grow I fell in love with the ballet and alchemy of combining flavors, aroma, textures, colors and how different ingredients felt energetically and felt when I ate them.

I was invited into the kitchens of world class Chefs on three continents to apprentice at their side and learn from these masters while simultaneously earning multiple degrees in immunology, virology, naturopathic medicine and behavioral medicine. My fascination with how bodies work developed at an early age driven by a passion for knowledge that brought me to study and apprentice with a variety of practitioners from Cambridge to Amazonian shamans. I traveled the world preparing food for the 1%ers and administering health care to their employees at underground clinics after hours. In my 30s I was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer only previously seen posthumously. Despite my prognosis I healed my body from an “incurable” cancer even rewriting my DNA with a combination of natural food medicine and behavioral medicine. I was told I was a miracle by cancer specialists around the world yet I felt like anyone could