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When I first met Dr. Alma Medina at the Latina Brilliance Summit, I knew I had to have her on the podcast. Here was a fellow first-gen Latina mama who had walked a path I recognized – from teenage pregnancy to pursuing higher education, from drinking the conventional medicine “Kool-Aid” to finding her way back to our ancestral wisdom.

Alma’s story begins at 19, pregnant and determined that her daughter wouldn’t have the childhood she had. “I decided to pursue higher education because I’ve always been good at school,” she shared. This led her to pharmacy school at University of Wisconsin-Madison – a journey that required picking up her little family and moving somewhere they knew no one.

But what struck me most about our conversation wasn’t just her impressive academic achievements. It was how she found her way back to the holistic healing practices we grew up with – the remedios our abuelas used, the wisdom our madres carried.

From Pills to Plant Medicine

“I gotta tell you that I drank the Kool-Aid,” Alma admitted about her pharmacy education. “They were like, this is the end all, be all. You get diagnosed, you get drugs.” But her upbringing kept calling her back. “My mom would be like, you know, no, and I’m like, mom, that’s such an urban legend. But there’s some truth to that.”

This is where functional medicine came in – a approach that looks at the whole person rather than treating us “in pieces.” As Alma explained, “if you have something wrong with your head, you go to neurologist, your heart, you go to cardiologist. So they kind of treat you in bits and pieces… but a lot of chronic conditions are really whole system things.”

The Gut Truth

One of the most eye-opening parts of our conversation was when Alma explained how the gut is literally the command center of our bodies. “People think it’s our brain, but it’s actually our gut,” she said. “There’s so much going down there with all the bugs and everything, and it creates a lot of the feelings that we have.”

This hit home for me because so many of us Latinas struggle with gut issues, hormonal imbalances, and chronic fatigue. But instead of getting to the root cause, we’re often just given pills to manage symptoms.

Reclaiming Our Food

Perhaps my favorite part of our conversation was when Alma challenged the narrative that Latino food is unhealthy. “I don’t know who was this smart person who said that Mexican food or Latino food was unhealthy and why people believed it,” she said passionately.

She’s absolutely right. Growing up, we ate tortillas, a piece of pollo, some eggs, salsa – “that’s all whole nutritious real food,” as Alma pointed out. The problem isn’t our traditional foods; it’s how we’ve moved away from them and toward processed options.

For diabetic patients who are told to cut out tortillas completely, Alma suggests a more nuanced approach using continuous glucose monitors to see how your individual body responds. “If you eat tortilla first, then your blood sugar could be high all day, but if you eat protein first, you can kind of curve the spike.”

Breaking Cycles, Building Wellness

What gives me hope is Alma’s belief that we’re the generation of cycle breakers. “We’re more aware. We’re starting to realize that our parents didn’t give us everything, but they gave us a lot of knowledge – both things that we want to bring into our lives and things that we don’t.”

For busy mamas wanting to eat more intentionally, Alma’s biggest recommendation is meal prepping. “If you spend a few hours in the kitchen one day a week… that actually saves you a lot of time during the week.” But she also emphasizes balance: “We don’t have to be neurotic about everything. If you can eat nutritious whole foods five days a week, and then the next two days you’re like, you know what? Mom’s off, we’re ordering pizza – that’s fair.”

Redefining Madrehood

When I asked Alma how she’s redefining motherhood, her answer was beautifully honest. She talked about being okay with not being with her daughter 100% of the time while pursuing her education, knowing it would create a better life for them both. She also emphasized open communication: “I talked to her about everything that we weren’t supposed to talk about – drugs, sex, everything. I wanted her to feel like she could tell me anything.”

This conversation reminded me why representation matters so much in healthcare. Having practitioners who understand our culture, who speak our language (literally and figuratively), who can see the wisdom in our traditional practices while also embracing modern science – that’s how real healing happens.

Dr. Alma Medina is doing exactly that through her practice, SoulBody Holistix, and I’m grateful she’s creating space for our comunidad to heal from the root. Because when we prioritize our health – when we become the cycle breakers – we transform not just ourselves, but generations to come.