Andrea Sherman
AZHCC members seem to be multi-talented, and charter member Andrea Sherman is no exception. Andrea not only has a successful accounting business, but she is also a certified herbalist. How is that for using both the analytical and the intuitive side of her brain? And the AZHCC is especially blessed because Andrea also donates her time to keep our books as well…for which we all are truly grateful.Andrea was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She says she “grew up on junk food and canned or frozen veggies.” As a youngster, she had terrible sinus headaches three or four days a week. “I had bronchitis, strep throat, and asthma – I was always sick. I ended up taking ten different medications on a regular basis.”
Then at age 26, she went to a naturopath for the first time and was told she needed to get off all her medicines. “Okay, I’ll do anything,” she remembers saying. He started her on a regimen of vitamin I.V.’s and she started to feel better. “After all those years,” she sighs, “It was the medicines that were keeping me sick.”
Andrea got even more involved in natural healing when she was working on her Bachelor’s Degree at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. “It took me fourteen years to get my Bachelor’s,” she laughingly recalls. “I tried elementary education, psychology, and exercise physiology. Finally, I graduated with a degree in General Studies with a minor in English. That worked because they let me tailor my program to what I needed for business and what I was interested in.”
Toward the end of her program, the Director of Health and Wellness at Oakland U. told Andrea about a graduate program in complementary medicine and wellness. It focused on psycho-neural immunology and gave her a chance to study “every kind of natural healing method’. She went through the program and completed with a graduate level certificate in Complementary Medicine and Wellness. Andrea was required to give lectures in every class and so she expanded her knowledge of several different natural medicine techniques even further.
Andrea had visited Phoenix in the 1990’s on a vacation get-away and fell in love with it. “I loved the sunshine,” she smiles. “It was 80 degrees in March!” So when she divorced in 2002, Phoenix seemed like the perfect place to make her new home. “All the stars aligned for me to move here. There is sunshine every day – I need that. It was always cloudy in Michigan.”
In Arizona, Andrea continued to enhance her knowledge of natural healing. First, she did a six-month internship in EEG biofeedback with a local doctor. Then she discovered the Chakra 4 Herb and Tea House on Camelback and 20th “It was meant to be, just like me moving here…just incredible.”
Andrea spent the next two and a half years in their program which she describes as an herbal pharmacy school. “We learned about both medicinal and culinary uses for herbs as well as how to identify them, grow them and harvest them.” She learned about Chinese medicine, Native American medicine and Aryuvedic medicine and the role of herbs in each approach. “For instance, according to Native American spiritualism, you offer a plant something when you pick it,” Andrea explains – a practice she uses in her own garden and when she wildcrafts.
She also worked with the Phoenix Institute of Herbal Medicine. “I traded my bookkeeping skills to help them get ready for accreditation as a certified school.”
Although Andrea is a certified herbalist with her own herb garden and makes formulations for clients, she says she does most of her herbal medicine and nutritional consulting for free because she passionately wants to change the world. “I hit rock bottom with regular medicine, but when I discovered the natural approach, it healed everything. I gave up dairy and reversed my headaches. I cut down on sugar and started taking probiotics and eliminated my yeast infections. I’ve been off my inhaler now for eight years after docs told me I would never be able to cure my asthma and I’d be on inhalers the rest of my life. I guess you go through all that stuff and suffering to know how to get out of it,” she explains.
“People complain that they don’t want to take the herbs because it costs money, but really, they don’t want to change their habits. I take away that excuse. When the time is right, the herbal consulting will become what it needs to be.” One of her dreams is to create a business called “Grow Your Own Medicine” which would be garden designs tailored to a family’s needs. The garden would include culinary herbs as well as anti-bacterial herbs. “They are often the same,” she explains.
In the meantime, Andrea’s accounting business is expanding through word of mouth. She keeps the books for over twenty different businesses and manages an office building.
Andrea found the AZHCC when she was sitting at a coffee shop reading the AZ Net News. She saw an ad for the chamber and went to the first meeting. Co-founder Meredith found out she did bookkeeping and asked if she would handle to chambers books pro bono…and she’s been doing the books ever since. “I thought the idea of a holistic chamber was so cool that I wanted to be a part of it.”
So what would Andrea have for her last meal on the planet. “I’m a seafood lover,” she enthuses, “so I’d have lobster and crab legs and sushi and oysters and mussels – with hot sake to drink. And if it was really my last meal, I’d have strawberries dipped in dark chocolate that was sweetened by agave.”
Andrea describes herself as pretty much “an open book”, so she struggled to find something that others might not know about her. “I guess it’s that I get fed up with mainstream America sometimes – the politics and people complaining about being sick and vaccination issues – and I want to sell everything and buy a farm in the middle of nowhere. I’d have goats and sheep and be away from everyone else. Just thinking about it can make me feel better.” Right now, with all the political campaigning going on, a lot of us would probably move with her.
Andrea is passionate about keeping the immune system strong so the body can use its natural defenses to fight infection. She tries to be a good role model for her two and a half year old daughter, Jasmine. Jasmine has been raised without processed sugar – only honey, agave and maple syrup. Andrea also likes to go to the local farmers markets to get her foods. “I go to the beekeeper to get pollen and honey,” she says. “And things are so meant to happen. One day, I needed a source of raw goat milk. I went to visit an urban farm, and a lady who was also visiting the farm announced that she had raw goat’s milk for sale.”
If you’d like to consult with Andrea about herbs for your kitchen, your garden, or your medicine cabinet or if you’d like to hire her as an accountant for your business, feel free to contact her at herbalthyme2002@aol.com or call her at 248-877-4577. She’d love to share her knowledge and expertise with you.