Kyle Homertgen, DO
Providing traditional Osteopathy with a Lifestyle Medicine focus
About Dr kyle homertgen
Dr. Kyle holds a Doctorate in Osteopathy from Western University Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific in Pomona, California. He completed his residency in family medicine and osteopathic fellowship at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine in 2010.
After practicing family medicine for 10 years in the Willamette Valley he finally was able to start his own practice with a focus on traditional osteopathy in Bend Oregon in August of 2020.
As an infant he was in a family car accident where the car rolled while his mother was holding him in her arms and thankfully didn’t let go! He grew up with recurrent headaches. Then after another car accident in high school and a rock climbing fall as an undergraduate at The University of Colorado, Boulder, he struggled with recurrent low back pain. After college, he witnessed his father having a heart attack in front of him after returning home from a few years working in Japan and China. These pivotal events and subsequent struggles led him to the pursuit of medicine.
Motivated by the work of Dean Ornish, MD at UCSF and his research showing the reversal of heart disease in patients following a whole food plant-based diet, he wanted to bring this food as medicine knowledge to his future patients and had his sites on allopathic medicine. However, he felt a limitation, wanting more skills to help his future patients, patients like him that had significant mechanical trauma history and recurrent pain. Luckily, he came across Andrew Weil’s book Spontaneous Healing. where he wrote about Dr Robert Fulford, a traditional osteopath and called him one of the greatest healers he had ever worked with. He learned that not all DO’s are like MDs and there was a traditional path of osteopathy that you had to seek out, as sadly they are small in numbers. Most DOs do not use their hands and a regular doctors in all the specialties just like MDs.
After finding an a DO that actually used his hands traditionally, he received his first Osteopathic Manual Treatment. This treatment, which didn’t involve the quick forceful thrusting technique that he was accustomed to during years of chiropractic adjustments in his childhood, the treatment was very gentle, so gentle he felt the experience to be quite bizarre. Yet in a few days after his first osteopathic treatment, he felt a significant change in his body for the better. It wasn’t just less pain it was improved function, more wholeness & strength.
To further explore traditional osteopathy and after finishing 2 years of pre medical school work after his 4 years of a non-science Bachelors Degree in Psychology, he volunteered and then became the medical assistant to Viola Frymann, DO at the Center for Osteopathic Children in San Diego. The following year he started osteopathic medical school and after 9 total years of medical school and residency training, in 2010 he started working in Albany, Oregon.
After 3 years practicing Integrative Family Medicine with OMT at Samaritan Heartsprings in Albany, Oregon, he decided to bring his holistic approach to a rural county clinic in Monroe, Oregon. He spent 7 years at the Monroe Health Center, a small rural county clinic between Eugene and Corvallis and in short time it became the busiest and highest rated clinic out of 5 in the county system. Unfortunately, trying to prioritize holistic health care in a rigid county system became too heavy of a burden and so with a heavy heart but a sense of excitement for a new chapter in his career, he decided to leap into his first private solo practice in Bend Oregon the summer of 2020.
My dream
Dr. Kyle is still holding on to his over decade long dream of building a sanctuary of healing for all sentient beings, where rescued animals can live out their lives and wounded humans, especially those with special needs can share space with the animals. He dreams of a self sustaining veganic farm where his patients can learn how to grow and eat a whole food plant rich diet and retreat from the modern busy world for a time. With his a passion for reversing chronic disease through lifestyle medicine and founded the first Vegetable Rx program in Oregon in 2012 where underserved patients were given tokens to use at the local Farmer’s Market in Albany, Oregon so that they could actually afford nature’s best medicine.
