Karen McGill
M.S. Graduate and N.D. Student
One of Karen McGill’s greatest thrills happened recently. Invited by one of her physician clients to come guest-lecture for a class of medical students, Karen was amazed at how completely open and receptive her students were. They genuinely wanted to learn how to offer patients natural health options before resorting to aggressive, allopathic modalities, and they seemed disgruntled that their curriculum had such few holistic/preventive topics.
Perhaps Karen’s passion and conviction come from the many creative ways that holistic alternatives have improved her own quality of life and also her son’s.
In 1998, her life changed forever when Gary, age 23, sustained a permanent head injury. For years she had dreamed of designing natural skin products, and for years she would now be challenged to rethink her life and his too. Ultimately forming their own company, Natural Indulgences, was a harmonious way for mother and son to co-create. “I design and blend the products in small batches for optimal freshness and potency and he packages them. We work side-by-side.”
As for herself, Karen McGill had first become a textbook case back in 1992 when, at age 27, she self-cured her own juvenile onset diabetes. “I had been taking two or three insulin shots daily for many years and endured diabetic comas as well as eye, kidney and heart damage. Doctors were saying I would not live to see 30, when right at that same time my father died.
I had been eating raw foods and taking herbal products for years, trying everything I ever read about in terms of “doctoring myself” and I guess the emotional jolt (of his death) just gave me faith that I could really manage my own health and improve my quality of life. I made my own decision to stop taking insulin and the results have been indeed nothing short of a miracle. That’s why I never, ever tell anybody else to try this because frankly, I have no idea how and why it worked for me. I just know that it did.”
There’s plenty more to know about Karen McGill:
- She has been a syndicated New York holistic health columnist for 15 years. But along with the popular column, “To your Health,” McGill knows that releasing one’s inner feelings can be healing. The three-time Golden Poet shares with us “A Message from Dad,” which appears in many anthologies.
- She and a sibling opened Sisters Health Harbor in 1984. “It stayed open almost four years; seems we were just years ahead of our time. Now would be a much better time to try it again, but Gary and I are busy with our own hands-on dream these days.”
- Their 1998 enterprise, Natural Indulgences, based on the knowledge that what we put on our skin absorbs into our skin: “In working with the internal health of the body through herbs, encouraging organic foods, pure water and proper breathing, I wanted to help people also apply this externally – literally – by putting soothing, health nutrients onto their skin.”
- McGill’s dream vacation would include a safari, including learning from a true shaman. “These humble healers of our time are dying out. To learn from one, directly, would be a dream fulfilled.”
- Karen and her husband, Joe, are also grandparents…twice! Their younger daughter, Amanda, has a two-year-old son, Michael James, who already loves reflexology, as well as a newborn daughter named Neaveh (Heaven spelled backwards!) Amanda does not allow her youngsters to eat junky toxins such as sugar, chemicals or dyes. Grandma Karen admits that it is very rewarding to see her daughter carry these important health traditions forward.
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