I Grew Up Watching My Parents Practice Medicine the Way It Was Meant to Be Practiced.
The origin of Dr. Myra’s approach and why it matters for your health.
Find out if Dr. Myra’s practice is right for you →Medicine Was the Family Business, and It Was Done Right.
Dr. Myra grew up in Louisiana in a medical family. Her parents -- Dr. Jackie and Dr. Lester Ancelet -- were both physicians, and they were the kind of doctors that communities built trust around over generations. Patients knew them by their first names. They made house calls. On Sunday mornings, her mother’s doctor bag sat in the car. Medicine was not a job. It was a relationship, a responsibility, and a calling.
Dr. Myra watched what it looked like when physicians truly knew their patients, their families, their histories, and the patterns that only reveal themselves over time. She understood early that this was what she wanted to do.
"I tell my children this all the time -- you just need to find your passion. I was blessed early on because I knew what mine was. I said to myself: this is what I want to do."
— Dr. Myra
She Trained in the System. Then She Watched It Break.
Dr. Myra completed her training at LSU and the University of Texas Medical Branch, then built a practice in Panama City Beach, where she has now served the community for over 35 years. In those years, she watched something shift in American medicine. Appointments got shorter. Specialties got more siloed. The relationship between patient and physician, the foundation her parents had built their entire careers around, began to disappear.
She watched patients leave appointments feeling dismissed. She saw diagnoses missed because no one had the time to look at the full picture. She saw people told their labs were normal while they knew, in their bodies, that something was wrong.
In 2015, she made the decision to leave the standard model. Not to abandon medicine, but to restore it. She rebuilt her practice around the principles her parents had modeled: Know your patient, take the time, look at everything, and find what others miss while there is still time to do something about it.
In 2017, she completed certification through the Institute for Functional Medicine -- one of the earliest cohorts -- giving her the advanced diagnostic framework to look deeper, wider, and earlier than standard medicine allows.
What I Am Finding in My Patients Would Shock Most Doctors.
With advanced testing that standard medicine does not order, interpreted in the full context of a patient’s history, Dr. Myra regularly identifies patterns that have been building silently for years -- and that were completely invisible in standard workups.
Patients have come to her after executive physicals at major medical centers -- with results that were read as normal -- and she has found meaningful cardiovascular, hormonal, or metabolic red flags that were overlooked. Not because the tests were not ordered. Because the results were not read in full context.
Advanced Cardiovascular Risk
Finding disease risk years before a standard lipid panel raises concern.
Hormone Optimization
Not just levels, but metabolites, processing, and what optimal actually looks like for each patient.
Mold and Environmental Toxin Illness
A personal and clinical specialty developed through her own experience after Hurricane Michael.
Early Cognitive Decline Markers
Identifying brain health risk years before symptoms appear.
The Synthesis
Gathering every piece of prior information from every provider, she brings it all together, and finding the pattern.
She has been voted the number one physician in the Panama City Beach area six times. Patients travel to her from across the country. She finds what others miss -- and she finds it when there is still time to change the outcome.
The Synthesis She Gathers Everything. Then She Brings It All Together.
When a new patient comes to Dr. Myra, she asks for everything. Prior labs from their primary care doctor. Results from every specialist they have seen. Old imaging. Previous evaluations. The things that were flagged and then forgotten. The things that were dismissed.
Then she brings it all together.
This is what medicine looked like before it became siloed. Before the cardiologist saw only the heart, the endocrinologist only the thyroid, and no one saw the person. Continuity of care -- one physician who knows your full story, follows you over time, and connects the dots across every system -- has become nearly extinct. Dr. Myra built her practice to restore it.
"Nobody else does that anymore."
A patient said this to her recently, after her first appointment. It should not be surprising. But it is. The more information Dr. Myra has about your history, the more clearly the pattern reveals itself. That pattern -- and knowing what to do about it -- is what patients travel from across the country to find.
The Art of Medicine Her Parents Modeled. The Science of Tools They Never Had.
Dr. Myra describes her approach as the combination of two things that are rarely found together: the physician relationship and trust her parents built in Louisiana, and the advanced diagnostic tools they never had access to. The art and the science. The human and the clinical.
Her practice is organized around four pillars (gut health, hormone optimization, lifestyle, and environment) because these are the systems where most disease begins, quietly, years before it announces itself. She is one of the most experienced functional medicine physicians on the Emerald Coast, and she uses that training not to manage chronic illness but to find what is changing before it becomes one.
The organizing principle: most disease develops silently for years before traditional medicine identifies it. The time to look is now, when trajectories can still be changed. Smarter. Stronger. Longer.
Gut Health
Hormone Optimization
Lifestyle
Environment
Credentials & Training
Board-Certified Internal Medicine Physician | Functional Medicine Specialist | 35 years serving Panama City Beach and the Emerald Coast
LSU Baton Rouge — Undergraduate
LSU New Orleans — Medical School
University of Texas Medical Branch — Internal Medicine, Galveston TX — Internship and Residency
Internal Medicine
Functional Medicine
Reversing Dementia
Lyme & Other Tick-Borne Illnesses Certified
Mold Literate Certified
University Community Hospital ED, Tampa FL
Bay Medical Center ED, Panama City FL
Seawind Medical Clinic, Panama City FL
Personal Private Practice, Panama City and Panama City Beach FL
"Best of Bay" The News Herald People's Choice Award – Best Physician
"Bay's A List" Panama City Living Magazine Reader's Choice Award
Compassionate Doctor Recognition
Small Business Owner Award PCBCOC (4th Quarter)
"Top Doctors in the US" Concierge Medicine Today
Our Care Team
Every patient at Coastal Personalized Medicine is cared for by a team that practices Dr. Myra’s methodology and operates under her direct oversight. Our nurse practitioners are highly trained in the early detection longevity approach Dr. Myra has developed over 35 years -- and they bring that same standard to every appointment.
Dr. Myra consults on complex cases, reviews advanced testing, oversees all care protocols, and sees select patients. You will never be handed off to someone who does not know your story. The team model is what makes the depth of continuity Dr. Myra’s practice is known for possible at scale.
Lauren Shimp, APRN
Primary Care Provider
Kim Smith
Administrator / Receptionist
Dee Allred, RN
Nurse
Gail May, LPN
Weight Loss Coach
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Dr. Myra the physician I will see at appointments?
Dr. Myra oversees all care at Coastal Personalized Medicine and consults on complex cases. Day-to-day appointments are led by highly trained nurse practitioners who practice Dr. Myra’s methodology and protocols. Dr. Myra sees select patients and is involved in the review of all advanced testing and care planning. Every patient in this practice is cared for under her standard -- regardless of who is in the room.
How is Dr. Myra different from a concierge doctor or a regular primary care physician?
Standard primary care manages symptoms and diagnoses disease. Concierge medicine offers better access to a standard physician. Dr. Myra’s practice does something different: it looks for what is changing in your body before it becomes a diagnosis -- using advanced testing, a full synthesis of your medical history, and a physician-patient relationship that follows you over time. The access is better. The medicine is fundamentally different.
Dr. Myra has been in Panama City Beach for 35 years. Why did she change her practice model in 2015?
She left the standard model because she could no longer practice medicine the way she believed it should be practiced. Ten-minute appointments, siloed specialties, and testing limited by insurance coverage were preventing her from finding what she was trained to find. The 2015 transition to a membership-based model gave her the time, the tools, and the physician-patient relationship that the standard system had made impossible.
What does Dr. Myra mean by early detection longevity medicine?
Most disease develops silently for years before traditional medicine identifies it. Early detection longevity medicine focuses on finding the warning signs before a diagnosis is made -- when health trajectories can still be changed. It combines the advanced testing of functional medicine with the continuity and relationship of the physician model Dr. Myra grew up watching her parents practice.
Does Dr. Myra see patients from outside the Panama City Beach area?
Yes. Patients travel to Coastal Personalized Medicine from across the country and contact the practice from around the world. In-person visits are required for new patients and for certain evaluations. The practice serves the Emerald Coast, 30A, Destin, and surrounding communities -- and welcomes patients who make the trip specifically for Dr. Myra’s approach.