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EDGE INTEGRATIVE WELLNESS Get Your Edge Back
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by Suzie Agrillo
vercoming health issues can be one of the biggest challenges of our lives. Traditional medicine alone is not always the answer. At Edge Integrative Wellness, owner Maria Crawford, FNP utilizes a multifaceted therapeutic approach to help her patients restore their health in our toxic world. Crawford is a Tucson native and a 2004 University of Arizona graduate with an MS in nursing. She began her career as a nurse in the pediatric unit of Tucson Medical Center. A former triathlete, she has always been involved in sports and nutrition. A bad car accident was the impetus for her to go back to school to become a nurse practitioner specializing in sports medicine. After graduation and some practical experience, this plan was revised. Crawford
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realized that her true passion is functional medicine. “I love it so much. It was like opening Pandora’s Box. It’s such an evolving field,” she observes. Crawford opened Edge Integrative Wellness in 2018. “Down the rabbit hole I went,” she says. “I think the true root cause of why people are ill is environmental toxicity. What I’ve found is that many people have been exposed to mold, chemicals, parasites and other toxic substances. This exposure can cause pain, fatigue and other illnesses.”
Toxic Overload We acquire toxins from our environment by breathing them in, by ingesting them or through physical contact. Every day we are exposed to new and stronger chemicals, air and water pollution and radiation. We
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often eat more sugar and refined foods, use prescription or street drugs or turn to alcohol to help us deal with rising stress levels. Other factors, such as lack of sleep, exercise and even negative attitudes, are thought to enable toxins to build up in the body and upset its regulation. If we are taking in more toxins than we can eliminate, our body will reach a state of toxicity. The digestive system can also wreak havoc on the immune system. If our digestive system is not working properly, there may be an overgrowth of destructive bacteria/yeast in the gut that encourages even more toxins to proliferate. Detoxing improves the health of the immune system. It will also increase our vitality and underlying health, and may even help with weight loss. Crawford will navigate her clients’ journeys through the complex maze of treating their illness. She considers herself to be the Sherlock Holmes of medicine. “I focus on discovering the root cause of a patient’s ailments,” she comments. Patients come to her with a white flag, because they are in dire need of getting their health back. “Sometimes the perfect storm causes the problem,” she notes. An environmental toxicity specialist, Crawford is also trained in medical weight loss, anti-aging, hormone replacement therapy, endocrinology, peptide therapy and genomic evaluation. Edge Integrative Wellness utilizes state-of-the-art genetic evaluations to customize patients’ fitness and wellness plans.
Medical Weight Loss Genetic testing is used by Crawford for the Medical Weight Loss program at Edge. She analyzes an individual’s genetic code to determine what types of exercise and diet to recommend. “Through DNA, we learn how many
