An Interview with Nutrition Expert
Dr. Donna Schwontkowski

Q: You have offered a wide variety of classes through Learning Exchange and seem to both dabble and specialize in many different areas. Can you tell us a little about your background?

A: Growing up, I was from a family where there was a lot of talk about disease. I always thought, “Why are you talking about the disease when you could be solving the problem?” My father had a heart attack and died while I was with him. That put a big emotional mark on me. I couldn’t remember how to do CPR and that drove me to become a memory expert. Before he passed away, he told me that he hadn’t been feeling well and I thought, “There’s got to be a way that something like this could have been prevented.” Also, my grandma was always into herbs. She had herbs in the backyard and would take us back there to show us different things.
I went to college for my first degree where I studied nutrition. After graduating, I became a food service director and dietician for different facilities. I would completely change their menus, so that everything was made from scratch. I wanted to see what you could really do with nutrition. We started having incredible success. People were meeting their weight goals, people were more alert, and all kinds of positive things were happening, but it still wasn’t enough for me. That’s when I went on to earn my chiropractic degree, while working on my Master’s degree in nutrition. I started traveling throughout the country and taught classes on how to become an herbalist and how to use nutrition to heal. While in Arizona, I was the technical advisor for supplements for several different companies. Amazon herbs became my specialty and I became pretty well known in the field.

Q: Amazon herbs seem like a very specific niche in the industry.

A: Yes, it’s very specific. The herbs coming out of the Amazon rainforest are the best in the world because they haven’t been cultivated. They’re wild and haven’t been tampered with and so they work faster.

Q: Rumor has it you used to be a local television star. What was your show about?

A: I was an editor for Health & Fitness magazine, and shortly after that I had a show on the access station called “Health and Fitness Solutions”. I did the show for about four years.

Q: Your classes at LEX generally have to do with health & wellness. What factors are key to a happier, healthier life?

A: Twenty years ago, all you had to do was eat healthy, stay away from alcohol and drugs, and detox. Things are different now. Now, you have to eat well by eating organics because there are too many pesticides being used. The CDC did a study and there are about 100 times more pesticides in our environment now than in our grandparent’s time. So now it’s about eating as many organics as you can put in the diet, with as little GMOs as possible. Also, it’s more important to get enough sleep because a lack of sleep can cause diabetes.

Q: What supplements or vitamins should people take on a daily basis?

A: People should know that one-a-days don’t work. You can’t take in all the nutrients you need all at one time. The body has to absorb them in little doses. If you have a supplement that you take twice or six times a day, it’s generally going to be better. A lot of them are unbalanced on the market, so they are missing elements. I’ll usually run a hair analysis on people to tell me what toxins the body is accumulating and use it as a research tool.

Q: Your next class at LEX is about arthritis relief. Please tell me a little about what people will learn in class.

A: It’s important for people to realize there are so many natural things that can be done. It all goes back to the nutrients and what’s happening in their body right now. You can’t say that everyone will have “this” result if you do “this”, so it has to be customized. We talk about the influences on arthritis and a lot of it is about nutrition. There are different herbs that they may want to take to decrease the pain and inflammation. I once had a patient that was scheduled for a hip replacement surgery. She took the class and we customized a nutrition plan for her. Nine months later, the doctor told her, “What are you doing here? Get out of my office, you don’t need the surgery”.

Q: What do like most about teaching?

A: When I’m teaching, I can expand people’s minds. I can give them a new world that they haven’t seen before and they can improve their health. They don’t need to be walking out with pain and suffering. A lot of this is just a lack of answers and the answers are out there. I’ve been lucky enough to find those answers and I just want to share them.