Meet Oscar Sierra | Herbalist, Health Data Puzzlemaster

We had the good fortune of connecting with Oscar Sierra and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Oscar, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
Social Impact? I used to think I could change the world. There’s a picture of me on the the cover of the Red & Black, a small UGA newspaper. I was protesting the Gulf War and government overreaches after 911. It said I was from Marietta in the caption, an oversight that bugged me for years. I’m less interested in changing the world these days– And that’s certainly not because I think society is any better or the government has in any way relented in their overreaches. Rather, now that I’m in my late forties, I am more interested in changing myself. If maybe I can have more meaningful impact with 1 person at a time who is willing to work and give something up for growth, that feels like a better use of my time than trying to impart some sort of social impact on social media or at social justice warrior meet ups. That said, I’ve had a couple of scribe interns who will definitely be making their mark in the healthcare world and probably carrying forward the torch that was once passed to me and it does make me feel warm and proud inside.
Mostly, I am a firm believer that what the world needs isn’t people trying to change the world, but rather people who are just more comfortable being in their mind and their meat suits. Once there is a critical mass of these folks, meaningful change will ripple out organically.

What should our readers know about your business?
I don’t know any other places in ATL or the world where you can walk in and immediately see a 30ft wall of herbs in jars on custom ordered non outgassing wood shelves with a rolling ladder and be greeted in English or Spanish by a talented team ready to bring you a cup of freshly brewed herbal infusion and also be able to grab one of about 30 different musical instruments from the walls to play to your heart’s delight.
There are a lot of great acupuncture clinics. Most don’t offer herbs. And if they do, they’re stock off the shelves in pills or capsules vs custom compounded. There are a few places that could make you a custom compounded herbal solution, but they’re not going to also be able to help you get your oral, colonic, or vaginal microbiome checked. There are a few dental colleagues who can test your oral microbiome and encourage you to get thorough blood work, but none that can do much outside of antibiotics to change the tune of your health. There are a couple of local oncologists that are offering the latest in serology and genomic diagnostics, but that’s honestly because they probably heard about it from us. There are a few oncologists understanding the significance of genetic and genomic mutations, but they wouldn’t know of botanical, nutraceutical, or lifestyle interventions outside of the relatively small pharmaceutical toolbox.
This is a pretty boutique custom tailored experience we offer. The logistics are difficult on our end such that we can deliver all these traditional and modern functional diagnostics and customized interventions and do so in pretty short order. My staff is pretty incredible. We usually are able to custom compound AND DELIVER tinctures, teas, topicals, nebulizer mixes, and even suppositories by the time a patient leaves the appointment. I don’t know of any other place within hundreds of miles that even aspires to do this.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’d point to 1812 Peachtree Road and say, “for over 50years, here stood the best restaurant in ATL” then cry a little Blue Moon Yerba Mate tear.
I’d take them to Blind Willies and Northside Tavern to see great blues musical acts like the Venus Kings, Cody Matlock, Skyler Saufley, and Supper. We’d be joined by a talented cadre of fellow leads and follows and dance until kinda late.
If we went to Blind Willie’s we’d probably first go next door and sit at the bar of the great Turkish restaurant, Truva, in Virginia Highlands. We’d order the beet and burrata salad and ask them to add extra mint and bring out their house Negroni while we took advantage of their delicious tomato and olive oil dip.
Earlier in the day, if I wasn’t working, we would go for a hike, or ideally a bike ride over the Cochran Schoals / Sope Creek trails just 15min away from my clinic. I keep a variety of extra bikes for this very occasion. On the way there, we’d definitely listen to Billy Strings. Once there, there’s also a good chance we might listen to Billy.
There’s a good chance this visit might overlap with one of the many yearly firepit dinners over at the welcoming home of my good friend, travel companion, and functional medicine colleague, Dr. Ellie Campbell, DO. We’d likely be joined by some of the best and friendliest integrative medicine clinicians in ATL and I’d probably end up smoking a cigar with Jim, Dr. Campbell’s husband.
There’s probably a good chance we’d cook a meal or two at my clinic with my staff and sprinkle in some herbs from the shelves into our meal.
There’s a 100% chance they’ll get a smoothie I make and they’ll probably like it and ask what that weird flavor is in there, and it’ll probably be schizandra berries that we ground up with fennel seeds or cardamom pods.
And if they come to ATL, there’s also a guarantee they’ll sit in traffic and be forced to hear about some plant or mushroom.
If they stay at my home, they’ll find a modest extra bedroom and bathroom, but they wont find a TV or internet or probably much in the way of fru fru cosmetics, soaps or shampoos around, so they’d probably need to bring their own unless they’re ok with the 3 in 1 shampoo, conditioner, and bodywash.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Most formative to my clinical approach, especially in working within the wholistic oncology realm the last 12 years is Donnie Yance, RH, a wicked smart Franciscan monk turned herbalist and cancer care guru. I’ve studied with learned teachers expert in western physiology, but they knew nothing about Eastern Medicine. I’ve studied with expert Chinese Medicine herbalists well versed in formulating complex and elegant herbal formulations, but they knew nothing of genetics. I’ve studied with TCM pulse masters, but they knew nothing of tumor genomics. I’ve studied with famous functional medicine practitioners (most of whom were totally full of themselves), but they didn’t know how to ID dandelion in their own backyard. Donnie is a rare breed. Someone who can at least talk intelligently about any of these subjects if not run circles around most MD’s and pharmacists. He’s also a fellow musician. I’ve noticed most of the clinicians I really admire were either musicians or engineers prior to being full time clinicians, from national figures like Jill Stansbury, William Morris, and Kenneth Proefrock, to local hometown heroes like Dr. Rhett Bergeron here in Roswell. It’s really been an honor not just learning from them, but getting to now call them my friends.
We’re gonna try and get Kenneth Proefrock out to ATL to teach a workshop on compounding. This guy is really something else. He’s really inspired my desire to compound my own quality stuff instead of relying on the ready made products of others which are only kind of a fit for a particular patient at a particular time and/or maybe a great fit, but days away from being shipped. I’ve met and shadowed many doctors around and no one holds a candle to the clinical Misterwizardry and DIY Macgyver skills of this long bearded humble master, who like all my other heroes, is a Renaissance man, and also like most of my heroes, has a fairly small or no internet presence.
Maybe my most recent Yoda type figure is the enigmatic & ever so wildly connected MD, PhD, Russ Jaffe who’s in his mid 80’s now. Though I feel confident I could reliable count on him for most any western clinical advice having to do with nutrition, physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology, I have been blessed to be able to lean on him more for career dilemmas and life challenges.
And last but not least I think I should give some credit to Mark Schwartz, L.Ac, a local fellow herbalist and acupuncturist who stays in the deep but narrow lane of fertility and Chinese Medicine. He’s a passionate herbalist like me, but if he wasn’t such a pain in the ass when we were business partners sharing an office, I probably wouldn’t have started my own clinic because I’m really not a consummate entrepreneur.

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