My Story

My goal is to provide individualized care for athletes seeking high performance by using Functional Medicine and Western Medicine

I was a boarded Emergency Medicine physician, worn out, burned out, exhausted daily to the point that I felt like I was run over by a truck each morning when I woke up. I had weight gain despite working out hard, brain fog, difficulty finding energy for daily chores or for fun.

I could barely function. I might have had one somewhat good day a week. I experienced this since the beginning of my residency in Emergency Medicine. Almost ten years.

One day while working in the emergency department (ED), a 6-foot 4-inch nurse practitioner (NP) that I worked with walked by wearing the baggiest set of scrubs I had ever seen on a man built like a linebacker.

We had a moment to talk about it. He had gained so much weight during NP school, while having to work, be a father, and a husband. He finally went on the Paleo Diet and had lost about 40-50 pounds.

My goal is patient centered health care that is life changing and life-long by using Functional Medicine with a focus on dedicated amateur athletes and professional athletes.

I had enough with feeling extremely fatigued, overweight, and dealing with brain fog, every single day; I was willing to try anything. I came across the book Practical Paleo, which had sections that sold me. It explained USA based GMO wheat and gliadin, starch and sugars, and food as medicine. I started the diet. I was not, and still am not a big meat eater, so I did not increase my meat consumption much from my baseline, but I did everything else. I gave myself three to four weeks to see improvement and if I did not see improvement, I would stop.

I was stunned. I was stunned at how much energy I had. How much clearer my thinking was and how much easier it was to get out of bed each morning. What I did not know was that I had, most likely, incredibly low cortisol, hence some of my symptoms. I had been so stressed for so many years, from medical school, to residency, to working as an attending with a wildly changing body clock, that I had depleted my cortisol. As it turned out, it took years to recover, which is not unusual when your cortisol is diminished.

I also did not know that I was using Functional Medicine and Naturopathic principles as I continued Paleo Diet and added meditation, physical recovery techniques, herbs, etc.

I continued to work in the ED. I soon found that I was getting weary of seeing patient after patient whom, if they could follow some of the principles that I had learned, would not be in the ED for high blood sugar from Type 2 Diabetes, or high blood pressure, or chest pain, etc.

In conventional Western Medicine, we treat the back end of disease. Waiting for people to be ill and diseased until we treat them with drugs. It distressing to watch and to know that Medicare and insurance companies would only pay for disease care, they don’t pay to prevent or reverse disease except with drugs.

I wanted to help others find better health using the principles I was practicing. Though emergency medicine has its’ place, I knew I did not want to continue in the ED, and I knew that I did not want to practice conventional medicine. I was ready to find a different way to offer health care.

I explored this idea for several years, looking into what was available for training. I listened to many different podcasts. I read multiple books by experts in the field of Integrative Medicine. I followed multiple experts online. I sat through seminars and webinars. I read blogs, articles, research, etc. Eventually I found the Institute for Functional Medicine, took one course, and ended up completing all the modules in February of 2020.

In March, COVID dispersed across the country and jobs thinned out for emergency medicine physicians. By that Fall, I decided it was time. I would jump off the cliff. I put the bare bones of the business in place and began seeing patients in 2021.

Since that time, I have trained in Functional Sports Medicine, a wildly fun and incredible approach to help athletes reach their highest level of athletic function. An athlete myself, I decided that it would be great fun to help athletes, whether dedicated amateurs or professionals’ athletes, achieve their sport and health goals by using Functional Medicine principles.

My journey has been well worth it.