Hey, I’m Garric, I’ve been consulting with physiotherapy patients since 1994 after graduating from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. I have successfully owned and run 2 private practices since 1995. Had the privilege of working with Olympic athletes since the 2000 Olympics. Consulted with the national rugby team players, provincial hockey and soccer teams, and looked after numerous professional athletes from a variety of sports. I have completed over 80,000 consultations and currently look after clients on 5 continents. But it has not always been the same. In fact, for several years I felt the medical industry wasn’t progressing. Even though I was lecturing at a post graduate level from 1996 on various physiotherapy subjects, I could see the short comings.

After working with patients with sports and orthopedic conditions I began to realise that there was an element missing. It was my perception that traditional medicine was treating the symptoms and not the root cause of the patient’s problem.

After studying at the Sports Science Institute of UCT in 1997 -1999 it was obvious that in sports medicine too, new thinking was needed. Working with national and Olympic team members revealed injuries that could have been prevented with taking a more in-depth approach to the whole athlete.

In 1999, my hands and especially my thumbs started aching. I was in constant pain while doing manual therapy on my clients. I had my thumbs strapped while treating clients. My hands would wake me up at night and I started to think that my career would be coming to an end. I noticed that my hands would get worse depending on what I ate and my level of stress. I took every course available to learn as much as I could about physiotherapy techniques and ventured into alternative techniques including kinesiology, acupuncture, muscle energy, nutrition, supplementation and anything else I could find. But there was still something missing that we could do to help patients.

In 2007, I would meet a thought leader physician, Dr. Badenhorst. Dr. Badenhorst would change the way I approached a patient’s health concerns. He introduced me to a new thought process around low penetrance genetics. Using lifestyle strategies, a patient could control their health. Like a dimmer light switch, it was possible to influence genetics. I understood how lifestyle, exercise, food and supplementation actually influenced our health. This led not only to improvements in my own health but also my family and patients’ health, too.

It was then that First Line Therapy and Functional Medicine came to South Africa. Once I went through these introductory courses, I knew this was the missing link to understanding the deep root causes to patient conditions. This started my travels to the USA on the road to be an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (2011-2016).

Since moving to practice in the USA in 2016, my passion is helping patients overcome difficult injuries and other health-related concerns. Helping the patient not only overcome their challenges but create a strong base level health that allows them to prevent further recurrence and live the life they deserve. Along with being the medical advisor to KetoNutrition Elite Team, the Founder of Just Add Nutrition, founder of The Ultra Athlete Project, and mentoring other health practitioners into Functional Medicine.