Spotlight Series

Guest Name: Dr. Mallorie Cracroft

Credentials: MD, FACOG

All right, well welcome Dr. Mallory Craigcroft. We’re so excited to have you here on this spotlight series for the best in Utah Public Health. We’re going to jump right in and dive into some questions right after I read a little bit of a bio about you.
So here we go. This is Dr. Mallory. She is a doctor, mom, wife, and busy woman trying to feel well and stay well just like the rest of us.

She understands that incorporating healthy routines into our lives and our family’s lives while juggling everything else can be daunting. She also understands that if you don’t do it, the juggling is even harder because you don’t feel your best. And so figuring out how to feel your best so you can do your best really matters to her.

And we also know that it matters to you. So after caring for women as an OBGYN in the traditional clinic setting for almost 15 years, she created Uplift for her to offer a unique approach to health care for women with a combined conventional and functional medicine approach. It’s important to her that her patients feel heard and valued and she wants to help them understand that their body, how their body works and that they can make some of the best health decisions possible knowing that information.

She strongly believes that it’s only, it is only by attention that we, that the whole person can really experience true health and wellness. And she can’t wait to work with you. I would echo all of that.

It’s amazing.

So, which is why we have you on here. We have so many similar values and beliefs in, in, in what true healthcare is.

So without further ado, we’ll just jump right into some of the questions that we have. So what made you decide to be a doctor, an OBGYN, and now transitioning into this functional medicine realm and kind of like walk us through like the pivoting changes through all of that?

Yeah, my story isn’t, I don’t think it’s as exciting as some people’s stories. You know, a lot of people have these, these giant stories about this hard thing they went through that, that, you know, ended up as a doctor on the other side.

And mine was very early on in my undergraduate degree, just, just really felt in my soul that that was the right path for me without really from a naive standpoint. Like I didn’t know much about it. I just felt like that’s, that’s, what’s going to be the right path for me.

So that started out to be a very, you know, soul following decision. And then the OBGYN step was more I was pretty clueless. Like I didn’t have a ton of exposure at that point in my life to an OBGYN.

And I did a rotation during medical school and just instantly fell in love with the mix of care that you get as an OBGYN, because you’re taking care of mostly patients who are super happy to see you. In a lot of medicine, most patients are not super happy to see you, right? You go to the ER and people aren’t like, I’m so happy to be here. But as an OBGYN, people are so happy to be there.

So that I fell in love with that aspect and getting to build a relationship with women from their earliest needs all the way up through their babies, and then into their menopausal years. And I loved that I got to be that shepherd, you know, during that time. And then there’s also a really nice mix of skillsets that’s involved in terms of problem solving and surgery and babies.

And it was a really broad, broad skillset. And I fell in love with that. And I did that in just a regular old conventional OBGYN for about 10 years and probably, I don’t know, six or seven or eight years into it, probably six or seven years into it, just found that it wasn’t, the lifestyle was really creating some trouble for some difficulties for my family.

Being gone all the time as a young mom and having babies in the middle of it. And it just was a real hardship. And I couldn’t quite find the alignment of how do I live the life that I feel like I should be living health-wise when I’m just spreading myself so thin.

So I really started looking for alternatives for that reason. And then kind of stumbled upon integrative and functional medicine.

Again, completely naive in this perspective of like, what? There is this whole field of healthcare out there that is supporting people and supporting and promoting healing.

And I had been just putting band-aids on people over and over and over. And so honestly, I was just flabbergasted. I was just, and a little bit mad, honestly, at my own training to say, this is out there.

And no one told me, like, I have been to years, years of training and school. I mean, years and years. And so really I was kind of mad and, but absolutely hooked instantly.

Once I started diving into the integrative and functional world and it became, I tried to incorporate it into my old practice and it became really apparent that it does not work at all. And part of that is because of the insurance model. Insurance flat out says we do not pay for anything preventative except for your cholesterol panel and your pap smear, which I appreciate they should, but they really are not promoting this type of care.

And so the insurance model was difficult, but also not all people are ready for this type of care. And I think it’s important to recognize that because patients would come to me from a conventional standpoint and say like, hey, I’m having painful periods. And I’d be like, all right, let’s dive in.

Let’s talk about this. And at the end, they’d be like, could I get my birth control pill? And I was like, okay. You know, like I’m thinking they want this integrative and lifestyle approach and they, not everyone did.

So I found that eventually I needed to change to a practice where people knew what they were going to get from me. Like I could really let people know what is different about me and, and what about my approach and they can come find me. So we’re right on the same page from the beginning because it’s just so much more, more effective that way.

Yeah. Amazing.

And that leads us into the next question.

Perfectly. You kind of, you kind of mentioned that right at the end there is like, what does make you different? And you hit on those things, but elaborate more on that a little bit of like what, what makes you different in your practice different now?

Yeah, I’ve, I’ve totally fallen in love with my practice, which I’m really proud of because it took a lot of soul searching and a lot of trial and error to get to this point, but I’ve built uplift for her to be a clinic that really takes every tool we have access to. And then we try to hone in on the patient and meet the patient where they’re at to which one of these tools is going to be best for you.

I found that, and we still see this in social media, a ton, the conventional world is very, very dogmatic. Like you do it this way or you’re an idiot, right? Like you do it this way or it’s malpractice. So that gets frustrating to me because there are treatments in the conventional medical world that are not the best for patients, but a lot of people then on the holistic side, completely dismiss the conventional side of things and say, all medications are bad.

You should never take a prescription medication. If you are, you’re doing something wrong. In the meantime, you must follow these health rules perfectly.

And that means, you know, getting your 10,000 steps in and eating your 10 servings of vegetables and meditating and red light. And, and, you know, what, what about the 80% of us that are in the middle that say, like, I agree with you, we should prioritize nutrition and healing and mind work and all of those things. We should prioritize that.

And I still don’t feel good. Like because of my busy life or because of my health, I’m not able to get there a hundred percent. So what do I do? And my clinic really, because I have the conventional background and I have the holistic background, we get to combine them and we get to say, where are you at? And some people need the prescription medication.

I call them step stools, right? You’re stuck in a pit and you need a step stool out of the pit, and then you can go do all the lifestyle stuff, but some people can’t just, can’t just do that right off the bat. So I am very strongly believe in patient empowerment and individualized care. So my job is to listen and to shepherd and to educate and to offer and to help them really sculpt their own unique health journey so that they can get where they want to go instead of where I think they should go.

And they can get there in the way that works best for them instead of the way that a textbook told me that 80% of women do best if they do it this way. Like, what about the 30%, you know? So it’s very personalized. It’s very comprehensive.

It’s very total woman. I really, I can’t get a patient out of my doors without telling them about stress and nervous system and about helping them with sleep and nutrition and healing. And, you know, you just, you can’t, you can’t focus just on the one little thing that’s going on, unless you’re like actively bleeding from an incision and you just need stitches, then you can just focus on the one thing.

But most of the body doesn’t work that way. It’s all interconnected. And when we treat the whole person, the whole person gets better.

So it’s extremely gratifying. It’s extremely rewarding. And honestly, just a huge honor.

Like I’ve been, like I said, kind of guided or soul led to this role. And I’m still kind of baffled by it all the time of like, this is amazing that I get to do this. And I get amazing patients who come in and we get truly amazing outcomes where they say like, you know, the people that I hear back from say like, I got my life back.

I never thought I could feel this way. And as like, what more could you ask for as a practitioner is to be able to be a small role in that and to be able to cheer them on. So it’s, it’s a, it’s an amazing practice.

I love it. I mean, we would echo the same things you just said. And I think that’s why we’re such in good alignment with that is like, like same feelings, same thing with like being part of that journey with them and like transforming, like seeing the transformation happen before our eyes and yeah.

And just like that whole person care and being in the, in the messy middle of like, you can be in both worlds. Like we, we are that way too, as, as physical therapists. I just like love that.

So thank you for sharing all that being said, then who is an ideal fit for you? Like what type of people are like your people that are coming into your clinic?

Yeah, women. So I only see women. I get asked weekly, where’s the male equivalent clinic.

And to my knowledge, there isn’t really one in the Utah area. So maybe someday I’ll, I’ll branch that way, but right now it’s all women. It has to be women who honor the whole body approach.

Mostly I get the right messaging out there and I get the right patients. Occasionally I get someone who comes and they just want a medication and I have, you know, I’m happy to do it, but I think it’s a little bit of a waste of their time. I think you can get that anywhere.

So it’s mostly women who really appreciate a different perspective on health. The, the perspective that I mentioned. But other than that, we we’ve really been quite comprehensive.

We do fertility and we’re working on some pregnancy support not prenatal care, but, but the holistic support to prenatal care, childbirth prep, postpartum recovery, and then also period support and menopause and hormones and depression and anxiety and heart health and blood pressure. I mean, we really, we really cover a lot of basis. So we have a broad patient base, but they really have to be ready for a transformation.

And that I say that sincerely, because not everyone is ready. You know, some people they’re just, they’re, they’re okay in the okay. And I totally respect that I’ve been there myself, but when you get to the point of saying like, maybe I’m not okay with the okay, like maybe I want to feel amazing.

Maybe I want to feel great. Maybe I’m sick of feeling this way. That’s when I want you, I want to come.

I want you to come and dig in and really be there with you to do the work because no question about it. It’s work. It’s I ask my patients to do hard things and I’m, I’m, I’m so impressed by them.

Honestly. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Okay. And then what does the process look like to work from work with you? Like for, as a patient, like what did they do to come in, get started and all the things like that?

This is actively changing right now. So I don’t know what it will look like exactly three or six months from now, but all of it right now is on my website.

We have multiple practitioners right now. I have a nurse practitioner who is focused mostly on hormone replacement therapy and menopause. And then also she does a lot of sort of get you started, like see where you’re at.

So we call that a health and wellness consult where they just get a comprehensive lab review. They get a lifestyle overview. They get a physical exam, a family history for genetic and cancer risk counseling.

And with that, I think of it like a snapshot. You just get to see like, how is my body doing? And you get to really start diving in from there. So she does those services.

I have two therapists. One of them is trained in perinatal mental health. So she deals, she can, she deals with women in general, but she’s trained, especially in supporting women going through fertility journeys, pregnancy, postpartum.

All of those are pretty unique and they take, they take someone who understands what’s different about them. So she is lovely. And then I have another therapist who is also lovely and deals with a lot of anxiety and life transitions and support and weight loss and sort of getting your brain game right around weight loss.

So she is wonderful. I have a couple of health coaches. I have a dietician, make sure I’m not leaving anyone out.

I think that’s the team right now. So it’s been right now. They just go to the website, look at the services and can schedule an appointment to work with me personally from a functional medicine route right now.

Awesome. Great. Okay.

The next question is what does recovery look like from your lens of like that transition from pregnancy to postpartum and the recovery that occurs during that?

Yeah, it’s so important. And I think there’s more and more people in this space doing such a good job. First of all, I think that the postpartum transition should be prepared for prenatal or first trimester.

We have to start and we have to start thinking about it and talking about it. And that’s something I do with my pregnant patients is I’ll see him in the first trimester. And we’re talking about morning sickness and how to take good care of their pregnancy.

But we’re also saying like, what do we do nine months from now? I think a lot of people focus. And I know you agree with us. A lot of people focus so much on the childbirth, which is wonderful.

And we should, but then it’s like, okay, here’s your baby. Bye. And so really we should be using that pregnancy time to train for the postpartum transition in a mental way, you know, to learn and to educate.

So I really think it starts early. And then the other thing that I would say this, we could both talk about this for ages, but what it boils down to for me is the word healing and recover and restore, like whatever those words bring up for people is what we should be doing during that time. And it’s going to look so different for different people.

For some people, it’s going to be early walking and early movement. And for other people, it’s going to be really holding back on movement and being slow for some people. It’s going to be like, okay, getting up and getting back to life and other people it’s going to look like really stepping aside from the hustle and bustle of life and asking for help.

And so it’s, it’s really needs to be personalized and it’s but yeah, I guess that’s, that’s the simplest non-specific way is just recover. You know, I think we don’t recover well enough.

I feel like every one of these questions we could probably talk days for, right? Okay.

Next question is what is something that most people don’t know that you think that they should know either about being a woman, your services, like anything, health and wellness wise? Like what’s, what’s one thing, one nugget that you can give people a scene?

I guess the, I mean, there’s a million things I could say?  I guess, the big thing that comes to my mind is maybe a silly thing to say, but the importance of joy. I think we get really, especially in functional medicine, we get really into the nitty-gritty and we talk about thyroid and nutrients and gut health and microbiome. And we, you know, we talked so much about the micro that sometimes we kind of lose the connection of like life fulfillment and joy.

And if you are going through life, like a computer where you’re a machine, where you’re like, okay, check this list. I’ve got my sauerkraut in for my microbiome. And I did my meditation and I did my red lightening.

You know, if you boil it down like that so much that you’re missing out on living life and feeling joy, honestly, you’re not going to have the same health outcomes. You’re, you’re just not, but you’re also going to miss out on life. You know, if you’re too busy trying to be healthy that you miss out on life, like kind of what’s the purpose.

So I think I’m always bringing it back to like, how’s your mood? How’s your fulfillment? How are you? Are you doing okay? Are you happy? Because if cutting gluten and dairy out ruins your life, number one, then we should work on that. Like, we shouldn’t just say like, sorry, you should cut it out and you’ll feel better. We have to dig into and say why, and can we give you more joy somewhere else? And it’s complicated, but I think joy is what I would say.

Awesome. Awesome. I love that.

That’s awesome. Okay. Is there anything that you would like to, anything special you want to promote to any of the audience who’s listening to this at all? Just our clinic services.

We have, like I said, our nurse practitioner, everyone has appointments except for me right now, I’m quite scheduled out. I’m still accepting new patients. We have a cancellation list and the cancellations, as I move my schedule around, we do get spots in that we’re able to, we’re constantly trying to get the new patients.

And so it’s worth getting on the list if you’d like, but really, I just love to promote the other services we have here because they’re so wonderful and they’re all fairly new. And so they have spaces available and where I’m so excited to get patients to see them because I’ve screened them very well and we’ve worked together and trained together. And there’s really just such a good comprehensive journey here.

And I think especially our, just if someone’s like, I just want to get started. I think that health coaching and working on food is undervalued. So I have those health coaches and a dietitian, and then my nurse practitioner who’s doing the lab work.

I honestly think that’s such a good place to start. Get your lab work, get your foundations in place with the health coaches, get your food in place and go from there. And really it will solve, like you won’t have as much of the diagnostic stuff as if you work with a doctor, but oftentimes you don’t really need the diagnosis.

You just need, I mean, all the answers are the same. It’s all sleep and stress and food. So fix your sleep and stress and food.
Don’t worry about it. If diagnoses disappear. Yeah.

Yeah. Amazing. Okay, great.

And then final question here is what is the main thing that you want to be known for?

Oh, that’s a tricky question because I think part of me wants to disappear behind the company that I’ve created. Like I want uplift for her to be known as the most supportive women’s health company. I want uplift for her to be a place where women can come when they don’t know where else to go.

And I want them to feel welcome and I want them to feel supported. And I get emotional easily when I talk about this because I’m so passionate about it, but I want them to heal and I want them to feel whole. And if I lean on that too much myself, I mean, how many humans can I help in my lifetime? Like I want to disappear.

I want so many people to be helped by this company. And if I can go hiking and go, you know, be socially connected with my own circle, then I’ll feel like I’ve really nailed it. So if no one remembers my name, I’ll be thrilled.

If people feel like they know where to go for help, then I’ll be happy.

Yeah. That’s, that’s my, that’s my secret life mission too.

Same thing with Reborn. It’s like, we want, I want people to know Reborn for what it is and not necessarily like, I’m the same. I’m literally the same.

Like, this is so great. Okay. And then where can we find you online, on social media, website, like all the things like that.

Yeah. Everything Uplift for Her. So the website is upliftforher.com. And then I’m on Instagram and a little bit on Facebook.

I don’t, I don’t really know how to use Facebook, but it’s there, it’s there somehow. And then we have a podcast by the same name Uplift for Her. I think that’s it.

The podcast is really fun. We talk about all things, women’s health, and I kind of like that. That’s my baby.

That’s where I just get to talk about what I think is helpful for women. So sometimes it’s things like we did one on finance and budget and money. And then sometimes we do it on gut health and anxiety and hormones.

And so we really get to talk about all things, women’s health and wellness and happiness. So that’s been a really fun project and fun to check out. Amazing.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time and sharing all of your words of wisdom with us. It was such a pleasure and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Thanks so much. Thanks, Betty.

Take care.