In life as in nursing, Gabriele Franklin, RN, tends to run counter to convention. So it made perfect sense that on a Saturday afternoon she and her husband, Andy, were covering their front lawn in Northfield, Minn., with mounds of dirt. "Monoculture is so dull," Franklin said, envisioning more natural perennial plants, herbs and "whatever we want."

Sixteen years ago, Franklin decided she wanted to be a labor and delivery nurse, choosing her specialty over neurosurgery and her other experience. After being hospitalized for seven weeks before the birth of her twins, she found that labor and delivery seemed to involve less medical intervention than the other fields, she said.

It was less grass-seed lawn, more natural environment.

"That has totally flipped around," Franklin, 47, said. The vast majority of labors are drug-induced because physicians want to manage the care and 99 percent of women receive epidurals, she said. "Basically, when I work at the hospital, I am a drug pusher. Of course, the patients are sick and tired of being pregnant and they're all up for it. I look at that as women sort of giving up their power."

But giving up power is what America is doing when it comes to health, Franklin said. What's won her heart is a nutrition-based philosophy of preventive health care and therapeutic doses of vitamins, minerals and herbs. The coined phrase is "nutraceuticals."

"The medical community thinks it's a joke," but that is from physicians who barely taste a nutrition class in medical school and hospitals that serve new mothers coffee, white bread, desserts and canned vegetables, Franklin said. "How can a dietitian think that coffee is good for anybody, much less moms who are in labor or are having their first baby? It's another form of drug."

Franklin said she grew up in upstate New York with parents who never bought prepackaged food and didn't go out to eat. She was a young mother working as a volunteer in a natural foods co-op in Iowa when a chance meeting with a new nurse awakened her to the possibility of a career beyond waitressing and driving a minibus. "I thought, 'I like healthy people. Maybe this would be a good profession for me,' " she said.

She works about four shifts a month-"Just enough to keep my skills up"-at St. Francis Regional Medical Center in Shakopee, Minn., and at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, which is known for its high-risk birth center.

Abbott Northwestern may have four or five cesareans a day and 20 labor patients, Franklin said. In an eight-hour shift, she typically is assigned to two or three women. Or one who is considered high-risk because the hospital recognizes that she needs more attention.

Franklin calls it a mission to share her move away from the allopathic model of health care to prevention through diet.

"The typical American will eat whatever tastes good," she said. "If it's advertised on TV and it's in the stores, if the FDA approves it and says it's good for you, they just trust.

"You know how common chronic fatigue is? Well, look at what people are eating. They're buying cases of soda and packaged, frozen, preservative-laden, color-laden junk. How can your body possibly utilize it?"

Franklin credits great nutrition with dropping her cholesterol level 70 points, the loss of nearly 35 pounds from her 5-foot, 8-inch frame and more energy to devote to home, family and her second passion: making beaded jewelry.

"I used to own a bead store," she said. "I even have a propane and oxygen torch and I melt glass rods and make my own beads."

Franklin, who once was a vegetarian, sees herself out of hospitals in the coming years. "I will have educated lots of people on good nutrition and still be playing with beads," she said. "And being in my garden and maybe being a grandma. Who knows?"

Contact Phil McPeck at getpjm@aol.com.