GRAND Magazine - November/December 2018 - 18

cover
GRAND's Cheryl Harbor spoke with Dr. Northrup
about her unconventional medical career, her insights
into being ageless, and what the Argentine tango
taught her about life.
GRAND: Dr. Northrup, you have been enlightening and influencing women for about four decades, so
please tell us what or who influenced you to choose
the field you did and why you decided to become a
doctor.
DR. NORTHRUP: My father was a holistic dentist. He
believed that one could see the health of a person in
their mouth. My parents were joggers before anyone
was running. My mother did yoga way, way back when
I was 12, so I had an introduction to a healthy lifestyle
that was so counterculture at that time.
I had a sister who died when she was six months old
because my mother had been prescribed antibiotics
for the entire pregnancy for viral pneumonia. My sister
wouldn't eat. Then, later, when my brother was born, he
also wouldn't eat. My father put in a nasal gastric tube
and my parents fed him every hour. They had gone to
every known medical person to try to find answers.
Nobody could tell them what was going on with my
brother. Finally, when he was a year old, they saw a
doctor who was a pioneer in pediatric endoscopy. She
found that his esophagus was badly eroded and she
told my parents to take out the tube. They did and after
a couple of days, my brother began to eat. He's now in
his 50s and running an international company.

"I remember telling my mother
I was going to medical school to find
out why doctor's don't tell you the
whole truth."

18 GRAND

NOVEMBER DECEMBER 2018

Dr. Northrup - Her early years as a physician

After all of that, I remember telling my mother I was going to
medical school to find out why doctors don't tell you the whole
truth. I never intended to practice medicine, but then I saw a baby
born, burst into tears and nearly fell to the floor weeping.

GRAND: Coming from that background, which is certainly
dramatic, you had to go through a lot of advanced training.
As you step back and look at the entire span of your career from the early days when you were immersed in traditional
medicine as a student and resident to your courageous decision to be a different voice for women's health - how do you
feel about the way health care has progressed?
DR. NORTHRUP: It's very interesting. The path has split
in many ways. When you're traveling, you can get what you
want almost anywhere - organic food in airports, a yoga
class wherever you go. On the other hand, there isn't much
focus on prevention. And there's still no place for unconventional ideas in conventional medicine. They look at you
like you're crazy. There's a great physicist who said "Science
moves forward - one funeral at a time." Ideas about things
like Vitamin D, thermograms for breast cancer, the negative
consequences of HPV vaccine don't reach people because
standard conventional medicine is the last remaining
unquestioned religious belief system we have.
GRAND: I've read that you focused the first half of
your career on treating what could go wrong with women's health and the second half illuminating what could
go right.
DR. NORTHRUP: That's all I'm spending the rest of my
life with. So the first thing you'd do, if you want to know
everything that goes right with your body is stop looking
so hard for what can go wrong. Because the problem with
finding something like that is now you have this in your
mind like a worm. Instead, understand that your body
knows how to heal.
GRAND: If you were to suggest to women who are in
their 50s, 60s and beyond some ways to stay healthy and pay tribute to their body's own ability to stay healthy, what kinds of things
would you like to influence women to do?
DR. NORTHRUP: First, I'd like to have everybody correct the
way they stand and sit because, as my Pilates teacher says, "It's
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GRAND Magazine - November/December 2018

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