Meet Dr. Miles Nichols of Medicine with Heart

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Miles Nichols.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Growing up my father was a doctor and state senator. He was a pinnacle of the community and was celebrated for countless good deeds and work in the community and state. He was a father to 3 biological children and also fostered teens.

While he was so profoundly influential and caring, he was under a lot of stress. One night, he called my mom and said “This job is going to kill me”. He was under pressure to prove that he could both be a senator and also a director for the Office of Public Health.

One evening, while I was babysitting Sarah, I got a call. It was Claudia from church. “Something has happened,” she said. “It’s your father”. I was 15 at the time. Just a couple of weeks before he had taken me to test drive a few cars. He wanted to get me one for my 16th birthday. Now he was gone. How could this be? Why did it happen? How come we didn’t see it coming?

This threw me into a spiral of deep consideration around life, death, purpose, health, and stress. I dedicated to myself that I would figure out how not to let this kind of tragedy strike my family someday and that I would do everything I could to help other families do the same.

This led me to a path of investigating mindfulness, meditation, Chinese Medicine, and functional medicine. My journey included a personal health battle with chronic fatigue, migraine headaches, and severe brain fog. Through advanced labs, diet, lifestyle, movement, breathwork, and targeted supplements, I was able to regain my energy and cognitive function.

I went on to found Medicine with Heart, a functional medicine clinic, and the Institute for Conscious Medicine, a training program for other providers to learn a mind-body approach to functional medicine. I have been invited to speak internationally, have hosted an online summit with over 25,000 registrants, and have authored two books.

My passion is to educate the community and providers about functional medicine, meditation, movement, and breathwork practices as well as to guide patients through an in-depth process to live long, healthy lives and stay strong into their golden years.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There have been many struggles. Losing my father at 15 was a big one. There were some small traumatic events before then too. My grandmother on my father’s side was sick and lived with us when I was small. She passed when I was 5. There was a babysitter who acted inappropriately and that took some time to forgive and work through the psychological implications.

There was a tick problem and while I didn’t realize it when I was little, I later found antibodies against multiple tickborne infections and was likely dealing with them to varying degrees for years. I had asthma, allergies, eczema, migraine headaches, brain fog, and some cognitive challenges at various times throughout childhood and into young adulthood. I dealt with chronic fatigue after college which nearly cost me my graduate education. I also had sleep apnea despite not being overweight.

My health journey was long and I learned a lot. I had to find out about things that no one had ever looked for out of my own needs and the needs of my ex-wife. She also was chronically ill. This took me on a journey that was invaluable for how I can now help others through the clinic. However, it was deeply challenging at the time. Later I went through a divorce and my mom passed the following year. I also struggled with my business at various points and had to pour savings in to save it.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Medicine with Heart is a functional medicine clinic that focuses on longevity, healthspan (staying healthy into golden years), and complex chronic illnesses like autoimmunity, gut dysfunction, chronic infections like long haulers and Lyme Disease, and biotoxin illness from mold and other toxins.

My clinic is often sought out by professionals who know my work and come due to a high level of research, clinical experience with challenging cases, and keeping on the cutting edge of innovative therapies. I also work with entrepreneurs, executives, and professionals who value their cognitive function and want to optimize productivity. There are also quite a number of people who are looking to proactively do things now to have a better end of life and to stay strong through the golden years.

Some things that set the practice apart are an emphasis on advanced diagnostics to look for things that are often never tested for or missed in other clinics. We sometimes see people who have been to 5-10 other clinics and we need to uncover things after tens of thousands of dollars of tests have already been done. There are some very useful and cutting-edge diagnostics we have found to uncover root causes and opportunities for greater health and happiness.

We also are sought out for natural treatment for very complex conditions that often are approached with a heavy-handed drug-forward approach. Our clinic does utilize some pharmaceutical interventions but also is quite strong in natural options that are effective with complex issues. Our process for retesting and gauging progress through objective data tracking and through research-validated questionnaires appeals to people who want data and like to see progress through changes in reports.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
We have learned so much. Long haulers or Long COVID has been a big issue. We are seeing a lot of chronic inflammatory responses and fatigue post-COVID. We are also seeing autoimmune activation and immune dysregulation. Even early-onset cancers seem to have increased. It is difficult to understand it all completely, but we do see great results working with people who have experienced lingering symptoms after COVID.

Also, the social impact of loneliness and human connection has become more apparent. The value of breathwork brain retraining and meditation practices for regulating nervous system function have been highlighted. The community has become even more relevant today than before.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://medicinewithheart.com
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/medicinewithheart