Hi, I'm Dr. Alexis Yip.

Draft · Alexis's own words (round 2), pending her final signed-off copy

Hi, I'm Alexis! I was born and raised in San Francisco, and I got my education in New York and Boston. These days I'm practicing in Phoenix, where I see patients from all over Arizona.

I'm passionate about traveling, exploring, and learning new things. When people ask what I love to do in my free time, my answer is: BE A NERD. I love reading and researching dental and wellness topics. There's nothing worse than feeling stagnant.

Sure, I can be a little woo woo (my favorite Disney princess has always been Pocahontas). I'm very spiritual and I believe in energy. My mission is to prove there's a better way to practice dentistry and medicine. Holistic dentistry isn't baseless or without evidence. As someone who's Chinese, I grew up learning that food is medicine and that the body has energy flowing through it. Eastern medicine and Ayurveda have been practiced for thousands of years. Who are Western doctors to reject that completely? The beauty of holistic dentistry is that it combines Eastern philosophy with the modern advances of biology and regenerative medicine.

What frustrates me is the misinformation out there. There are a lot of half-truths on the internet. Reality is complicated. Everything is multifactorial, and we're all unique, so what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. I have a passion for sifting through the noise and verifying the science behind things. The world is still a mysterious place, and there's so much we don't know yet. Approaching it with wide-eyed curiosity is what makes life exciting. Frustrating too, since we have to acknowledge the limits of what we know.

Life is a confusing, loud place. You never know who to believe. That's why establishing your foundational values matters so much. They ground and anchor you. Like Earth, everything above that ground can grow, change, and flow. I'm a big fan of the 80/20 rule. You can't control everything, and trying to is so stressful it'll actually make you sick. There's a lot of fear in the holistic world, and I want to ease some of that. My job is to educate you, but at the end of the day it's your intuition that guides you to the right decision for yourself. Don't be too rigid. Let it flow.

My honest answer to most things is "it depends." Rarely is anything black and white. All perspectives are valid, and I'm a firm believer in shades of gray. There's a lot of hate and villainizing in the world, but I choose to be open-minded and open-hearted. I try to meet patients where they are. I may not be the dentist for everyone, and that's perfectly okay.

I'm a cat mom. I rescued Esmie, a short-haired grey tabby, from the New York Animal Care and Control back in 2015 when I was in college. I spent some of my younger years volunteering at animal shelters, and I'm a firm believer in Adopt Don't Shop. None of this is a detour from the dentist part, by the way. You can't say you care about whole-body health and then pretend the person matters less than the molars. The whole human is the point.

There's a misconception that dentists are out for themselves. But a lot of us are actually anxious perfectionists who lie awake at night thinking about our patients. We're just humans trying to help humans.

Before I landed on dentistry, I actually wanted to be an airline pilot, and I think that says something true about me: there's nothing I love more than being out in this beautiful world. Awe-inspiring architecture, food I've never had, learning how other cultures live, world history, standing somewhere and just feeling small on Mother Earth. When I'm home, a perfect morning is a hot unsweetened matcha latte and a good book. The most soothing thing I know is watching ocean waves. My favorite color is green, I do yoga and pilates, and yes, I love dinosaurs. What I try to lead with, in the chair and out of it, is integrity, compassion, and standing true to my values.

Nice to meet ya!