I always felt that I was a healthy person. I was thought of as the team “health nut” in college due to my vegetarian diet, and my passion for rowing kept me in good physical shape. However, despite my otherwise good health I started experiencing chronic low back pain my sophomore year of college. Over the course of five years, I tried everything I could think of. Different forms of chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, yoga, and physical therapy didn’t touch my pain. My x-rays were clean- perfect even- and doctors and classmates implied that it wasn’t really that bad or it was all in my head.

Luckily, even early in my schooling, I was always my first patient. As I started learning about functional medicine I tried different detoxes, supplements, and diets. This led me to do my first elimination diet and eventually a food sensitivity test, which alerted me to several underlying food sensitivities and undiagnosed autoimmunity (“Surprise! It looks like you’re a Celiac!”). It was then that I learned that the cause of my pain wasn’t my back at all! When I cut out the foods I am sensitive to (namely, gluten) my pain went away completely. It is this experience that initially fueled my passion for functional medicine.

In graduate school I found myself dealing with a great deal of digestive upset. It seemed like everything I ate caused bloating, diarrhea, or both (so, I had IBS-D but didn’t realize it until years later). I was constantly “tinkering” with my diet and was on the hunt for “the food” that was making me sick. I lived off of leaky gut healing supplements and herbs for months at a time and was dismayed when my leaky gut symptoms kept coming back. After graduating, I finally got off of my keister, ponied up some money, and got proper testing done. It was at that time I learned that I had several types of dysbiosis (candida/fungi, bacteria, and a parasite!) and addressing that in addition to the leaky gut led to a full resolution of my symptoms. Looking back, I strongly suspect I had SIBO but I didn’t know to ask for a breath test at the time (SIBO wasn’t well known until a few years later). To hear more about my IBS/SIBO story in a Youtube video vlog, click here.

I fell in love with the field of functional medicine in grad school and haven’t looked back since. What started as an interest to help myself and my mom (thyroid autoimmunity (Hashimoto’s)) turned into a passion that is still going strong today.

I look forward to meeting you and helping you soon!

- Dr. D