Chronic Digestive Chaos

You’ve struggled with vague, undiagnosed digestive problems for a long time. You can’t eat what you want – it seems like everything hurts, everything makes it worse. Sometimes, you have great days and you think it’s all going back to normal.  Then, often without explanation, you’re right back where you started. You’re starting to hate the whole idea of eating! You just want some relief.

When working with a digestive complaint, most people will try almost anything to feel better. On the more conventional side of the spectrum, various kinds of pharmaceuticals and surgery are the most common solutions. The problem with these solutions is that they tend to ignore the underlying condition – focusing instead on symptoms. They also can have the tendency to produce side effects that decrease your vitality now and in the future.

If you seek more alternative care, you may find yourself on a very restrictive diet, taking loads of supplements, doing colonics or other types of purging and cleansing. While these therapies have some benefits, they tend to be unsustainable over the long term – either your body eventually reacts to the intensity of the regimen or you just can’t keep it up given your busy lifestyle and financial constraints.  It can be a real heartbreak – finding something that provides a measure of relief but being forced to abandon it mid-stream.

There are three basic keys to unlocking real, lasting digestive health.

• First, you need to pay attention to the whole body – not just the digestion. Your digestive system does not live in a vacuum! Your stress level, the quality of your sleep, the level of tension in your muscles and the hidden world of all your organ systems all have unique impacts on your digestive health.
• Second, you need to build a strategy that is tailored to the intricacies of your own body. While reading about others’ journeys with similar problems can be helpful, it’s ultimately your particular physiology that is going to put every solution to the test.
• Third, you need to make real, lasting life changes. It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.  Many digestive problems are aggravated by fairly common modern habits – and those habits need to be examined and worked with if you want real relief.  However, changing habits should be done simply, gently, in a step-wise manner and with a solid base of support.  Done in this way, anyone can be a vital contributing partner in their own healing.

As simple as these three keys may seem, compassionate expert assistance will make them easier to implement and, most importantly, more likely to lead to a permanent improvement in your quality of life.  I have been working for the better part of a decade to become a person who can provide that kind of support. I was my first patient, and I tested nearly every strategy available to recover from my own digestive problems. With every twist and turn in my own journey, I became more interested in the importance of digestive health for the health of the entire body and more concerned about the lack of real solutions available for people in my position.

In 2005, I enrolled at the National College of Natural Medicine, graduating with Honors with a Masters of Science in Oriental Medicine and later obtaining my license and NCCAOM board certification. I was trained primarily as an herbalist by some of the luminaries in the field of Chinese Medicine, including Heiner Fruehauf, PhD – who is known for his dramatic success with the most debilitating chronic health conditions.  I spend time every single day researching and testing to be able to deliver the most effective long-term wellness to my patients.  Some might say I’m a little obsessed.

I don’t restrict my learning to herbal medicine, however. I am also an avid student of the science of lifestyle design.  I have been discovering and testing methods for making lifestyle changes that stick.  Over time, we will work together to implement simple, effective strategies into the flow of your life.  This will help enhance the results we achieve together, but also give you lifelong tools that you can use to meet future challenges.