Naturopathy is her calling, but at one time Dr. Kim Matteo had chosen a much more traditional healing path, that of a surgeon.

Matteo began researching natural healing with the birth of her second son, who had suffered a stroke in utero. Doctors told her to continue school and put him in a facility for the short amount of time he would have.

"I chose to be his mom instead. It was for the quest for my son's health that I started the journey into natural healing, and it started with nutrition," she said.

As western medicine began to fail her son, she looked beyond nutrition and into herbs, which were far from foreign to Matteo.

She grew up near the old market in Omaha, in what was known as the Little Italy area, as her grandmother and great-grandmother used herbs for a variety of childhood complaints.