Integrative Family Medicine
Heidi A. Heap-Chester, MD, commonly known as “Dr.Chester”, has been a primary care physician, and consultant on complex medical cases, for 29 years, and has spent most of her professional life at the Leech Lake Reservation working with the Indian Health Service, which includes extensive experience with people who have diabetes, heart and vascular disease, arthritis, chronic pain, autoimmune disease, and cancer. Many people also had tickborne diseases on top of these chronic medical problems.
She has had a lifelong interest in integrative and complementary medicine, and received certification from ABIHM. Dr. Chester is interested in immune system health, understanding food allergies, autoimmune disease, healing from toxicity and other related issues. She has worked in hotspots for Lyme disease and tickborne illness (Central Minnesota and recently southern Maine), and has experience working with people who are healing from these challenges, and the often-accompanying Candida, using detoxification, immune enhancement, prescription, herbal, combination and homeopathic treatments. She has been knowingly seeing patients with Lyme disease for the last 10 years, more intensively in the last 5 years. She attended the ILADS 2014 conference and has also worked with other physicians who appreciate the complexity of Lyme/AD.
Dr. Chester grew up in Northern New York, visiting Maine in the summer, and got her M.D. degree from SUNY Upstate Health Sciences University in Syracuse, New York, 1982. She completed her residency in Family Medicine at the Deaconess/Buffalo General Hospital system, and she and Greg then moved to Cass Lake Minnesota in 1986, to fulfill her scholarship obligation to the Indian Health Service. She continued there, as both she and her husband became involved in the local community, and raised their two sons to adulthood in Cass Lake. She learned first hand from family members about food allergies, dental toxicity, chronic fatigue, CO poisoning, autoimmune disease, and tickborne illness, many of which were treated with naturopathic or homeopathic remedies. She acknowledges that she would not be where she is today without the services, teaching and mentoring of a skilled homeopath. Dr. Chester is thrilled to move back to the East Coast, as part of her family are multigeneration Mainers; although out of state, her parents, siblings, older son and his wife now live within commuting distance. Her husband Greg also has roots in New England.
The opportunity to join Integrative Health Center of Maine is a great honor. Dr. Chester believes learning is life-long, and ongoing. She is already employing the concepts of functional medicine and continues to learn more about this. Areas of interest for further study include evaluation and treatment of chronic stress, adrenal, thyroid and other hormonal issues (preferring to correct the underlying and causal conditions whenever possible), chronic insomnia, individual biochemistry and epigenetics, brain inflammation, EMF’s, chronic mold, MCS, CFS, homeopathic organ support, smoking cessation, and drainage/detoxification systems, and learning the application of functional medicine to many other chronic medical problems. She is eager to work with and empower people who are motivated to use natural methods to strive toward encorporating their vision of Healing and Wellness.
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