Tia Christ, Nurse Practitioner

I have been a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner since 2015 and a Registered Nurse since 2010. I am a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner (CFMP) and I am certified with BHRT Training Academy to prescribe bioidentical hormones. I am also a Certified Autism Specialist (CAS) through IBCCES. I am a licensed Nurse Practitioner with the state of Oklahoma and I am able to diagnose, treat, order tests, and prescribe medications. I have also started a Functional Medicine program through the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) to further my knowledge!

I started my nursing career in adult critical care and soon realized my community was in dire need of preventive care and health education. Hypertension, diabetes, heart failure, depression, and obesity ran rampant in the critical care unit, I was bound and determined to be a part of the solution to “fix” these problems. I thought working in primary care as a nurse practitioner would solve the issues and appease my desire to truly help people. I was gravely disappointed after spending eight years working as a primary care nurse practitioner due to the “pill for every ill” style of the current medical modeI. I came to terms with the fact that I was on the wrong side of medicine when I told myself I would not take 90% of the medications I was prescribing to patients. 

I spent most of my career as a nurse practitioner working with internal medicine patients with a variety of chronic medical conditions. I educated patients as best I could, but I was prescribing prescription medication to only treat symptoms. Traditional medicine is wonderful for trauma, emergencies, and surgery, but it is failing people with chronic illnesses. I was not treating the root cause of illness and my physician colleagues were not open to finding the root causes either.   

I was taught to assess, diagnose, test, and treat patients in a certain way (most physicians, PA, and NP programs function in this manner). I knew that “natural treatments” were available, but I was not educated about these treatments in my training and the physicians I worked with greatly deterred patients from trying these treatments as they were not “FDA approved”. I have always had an interest in herbal medicine and I knew I could not continue a career in conventional medicine after completing my certification in functional medicine. 

I have a supportive husband Dustin, two sweet boys, two cats Reaper & Ruka, and a Golden Retriever girl, Daisy. I enjoy reading, spending time by the pool, watching movies with my sons, and traveling with my family. Our favorite place is the beach and we try to go every year to play and unwind. I truly believe God called me to be a Nurse and that it is my Will from Him to help & serve others. 

The idea for Pathway Health & Beauty started with a sweet Christmas card in December of 2022. A kind man mailed the card to my clinic and thanked me for changing his life (he did all the work; I gave him the tools). He lost 97 pounds and reversed his type 2 diabetes with a complete change in his diet!  I began a functional medicine certification program in 2023 which led me to diagnose and treat myself using the power of functional medicine. I left my stressful internal medicine job in 2024 and the constant anxiety slowly melted away as I began to finally heal my body, mind & spirit. I believe conventional medicine and functional medicine can work in harmony together, but most people are able to change their health with proper nutrition and lifestyle changes.   Many people will also need  functional medicine tests to figure out the root causes to their healthcare problems (I sure did!). I am able and willing to work with your current primary care provider to improve your health. I truly believe functional medicine is the future of medicine and that most clinicians will be practicing this way of medicine in the years to come.