Find Your True North

Dr. Michelle Thompson-Olson DO

About

Dr. Thompson is an integrative and lifestyle family medicine physician who treats the root cause of health problems, not just the symptoms. She is a graduate of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, where she studied the holistic approach to health care. As the former director of Great Lakes Institute of Technology massage therapy program, she began building her integrative knowledge in 1998. She has practiced integrative and lifestyle family medicine since completing her family medicine residency at UPMC Mercy Hospital Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2003, while training in a faith based hospital, she began learning the true meaning of mind, body, and spirit and how important it is in treating patients.

She is a Board Certified Osteopathic Family Medicine Physician, a former trustee for Pennsylvania Osteopathic Medical Association, and a committee member for Complimentary and Integrative Medicine since its development. She has studied with the Neuromuscular Therapy Center in St. Petersburg, Florida, and been an active clinical teacher for medical students, interns, and residents, passing along knowledge gained in her integrative career. Additionally, she is an associate medical professor for LECOM and PCOM, both osteopathic medical schools in Pennsylvania, a faculty for University of Pittsburgh Medical School, and Vice Chair of Family Medicine for UPMC Horizon. As a physician advisor for Nemacolin Woodlands Resort Holistic Healing Center in Farmington, Pennsylvania, she has built wellness retreats.

Born and raised in the Shenango Valley, Dr. Thompson has developed a Free Healthy Living Series, where she lectures and provides experiential opportunities to anyone in the community seeking knowledge in integrative modalities. Her programs are eligible to receive credit toward insurance deductible by showing the participant has “taken a healthy step.” She has taken her unique medicine approach out of the office to share in efforts to reach more people, designing programs with no financial, physical, age, or gender barriers. By collaborating with fellow practitioners, community members have experienced yoga with live acoustic guitar, aromatherapy, sound therapy with crystal singing bowls, flutes, gongs, didgeridoo, art therapy, reiki, tai chi, qigong, energy modalities, dancing mindfulness, breath work, guided imagery, kids yoga, meditation, nutrition, and lifestyle modalities all free of charge.

She has been active in teaching the whole food plant based diet to people in her community, creating cooking programs with a local chef and dietician, for eating to reverse disease. By promoting “Doctors in the Kitchen-Food is Medicine,” she hopes her peers will implement these changes into the way they practice medicine and will become models of health and healing for their patients.

Currently, Dr. Thompson is employed by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and has a full-time integrative family medicine practice, seeing infants through the end of life using a natural approach to health care. Her specialty is reversing disease through diet, exercise, and lifestyle changes while empowering her patients to take charge of their health and work as a team with their physician. There are healing powers of proper nutrition in almost all disease processes, and she believes that eating for health can be enjoyable if we eat in a way that serves our body