Naomi Parrella, M.D., FAAFP, FOMA, DABOM
You expect excellence in your career. You can expect excellence in your physical performance. When your physical body aligns with your spirit and your mind, your potential is limitless.
If you are ready to build this foundation for yourself or your organization, I invite you to explore how we can partner together and make this happen.
My Story
In Western medicine, we focus on symptoms and we traditionally neglect the interaction of body systems. In medical school, I was trained to diagnose and treat illness. But an often unaddressed problem I saw in my clinic, after listening to thousands of patients, wasn’t something that fit neatly into a diagnosis or that I could write a prescription for.
I saw a deeper pattern of disconnection. I saw high-achievers running on empty, leaders stuck in unsustainable systems, and people who were told they were medically “fine” but knew they could feel and be so much better. They were ready to heal but lacked a true partner to guide them through the complexity.
My bicultural background offered me a unique lens on this challenge. Growing up in Japan, I saw a different operating system for life based on cultivasion, and it started with health. I was struck by cultural traditions that created a “flywheel of improvement” through lifestyle practices such as daily group exercises from preschool onward, and a deep-seated belief in “eating for healing” to preserve the freedom to pursue what matters in life.
This showed me that the patterns of burnout and disconnection we often face are not inevitable. It proved that an environment can be intentionally designed to support the foundational pillars of health for every member. I became obsessed with the question: How can we add this principle of “Cultivation” to the ambitious world of modern leadership?
This isn’t just a philosophy; We can build the systems to make it real.
A Proven Systems-Builder
As the inaugural Chief of Lifestyle Medicine and founding Medical Director for the Rush Weight Loss and Lifestyle Medicine program, my team and I designed and scaled the service from the ground up to a network of eight clinics. We have created a community that consistently achieves success across multiple metrics because we focus on foundations of health, connection and sustainable change, not just short-term fixes.
I saw this same principle ignite a community when I led a rural aerobics class, which grew from two women to filling the high school gym. I have also seen it unite thousands of employees across global companies, from airlines to finance, around a new vision for their collective wellbeing and performance. Across all these experiences, the formula is the same. Transformation requires connecting foundational concepts with a shared language and practical strategies that work.
Today, I focus this lifetime of learning on people who aspire to make a positive impact. In addition to my clinics, I am the Chief Medical Officer for Zero Longevity Science, the world’s #1 fasting app. I have a front-row seat to the most urgent conversations in health today: How we can leverage powerful new tools, from digital health to GLP-1s, not as a crutch, but as a catalyst for profound, regenerative transformation.
Known as the integrated health strategist, this is my skill set: I see through the complexity and connect the dots. I help individuals understand the language of their own biology. Together, whether it is 1:1 or as a group, we move beyond the symptoms to design a sustainable system to level up.