It’s been a long winding road…So please bear with me ;-)

Just like the many chronically ill people I work with, my search for health has been a long and complicated process. Born underweight, with a highly sensitive nervous system and dysfunctional connective tissue (eventually diagnosed as Dysautonomia & Ehlers Danlos Syndrome), living in my body was never a picnic. As an infant, I suffered from projectile vomiting, persistent skin allergies and chronic ear infections. By the time puberty hit, I developed frequent nose bleeds, varicose veins, severe menstrual cramps, chronic back pain (later diagnosed as scoliosis), and excruciating migraines. But as uncomfortable as life frequently was back then, I don’t remember my health challenges really slowing me down. Maybe it was my youthful naivety, the eternal optimist in me, or just the support of my family, but I just kept trucking on and managed to lead a pretty normal life while growing up.

It wasn’t until college that my health really took a turn for the worse. It first began with a chronic bout of fatigue that I just couldn’t shake no matter how much I slept. It was the type of fatigue where your arms and legs feel like lead and you are so drained of energy that the thought of taking a shower seems as exhausting as running a marathon. If that wasn’t bad enough for a girl in the supposed prime of her life, the fatigue was soon accompanied by horrible brain fog, constant headaches, shooting nerve pains in legs and feet, intolerance to weather changes, heart palpitations, rapid heart rate, blood pressure fluctuations, dysglycemia, persistent acne, and severe IBS.

Desperate to find some answers, I went from doctor to doctor and had numerous lab tests and imaging studies done. But after many months of appointments and testing, no one was any closer to explaining what was actually going on with me. In fact, some of the doctors I saw simply didn’t believe I was sick. I can still vividly recall my family doctor handing me a referral to a psychiatrist because in her eyes I looked quite healthy and my lab tests were all ‘normal,’ and so it had to be hypochondria or another mental health issue. Needless to say, I left her office feeling incredibly frustrated and misunderstood, and with very little hope of ever being fully heard or helped. I cried myself to sleep that night while I began to seriously consider dropping out of school my senior year. I just knew that I couldn’t keep functioning on what was essentially fumes for much longer.  Fortunately, natural medicine and holistic nutrition came into my life at just the right time!

On one particularly rough evening after coming home from school feeling very weak and defeated by my symptoms, my parents introduced me to a nurse who had come over to our house to perform an exam on my dad as part of his life insurance application. This nurse was different from any health provider I had ever met before because she knew a ton about nutrition and how to use food as medicine. She also raved about an herbalist/holistic nutritionist who had helped her and her son return to health. Although I was reluctant to believe that the answers to my complex health problems were as simple as adding a few healthy foods and/or herbs, my mom managed to convince me to pay this herbalist a visit. She herself had been suffering from severe pain and fatigue at the time due to two autoimmune diseases, Lupus & Rheumatoid Arthritis, and figured we had nothing to lose. And so we ended up going, and because of taking that simple step, our lives were forever changed. Within just a few months of implementing the herbalist’s suggestions of taking a few detoxifying supplements and following a diet that was free of gluten, dairy, processed foods and compatible with our bio-individuality, both my mom and I began to feel drastically better. I could finally have a few days a week where I didn’t feel completely drained and as a result, was able to graduate from college with high honors. And my mom, who at times spoke of suicide because her joint pain was often so severe that she couldn’t get out of bed, could finally stop taking all of her pain meds!

Impressed and inspired by these incredible results, I decided there and then that I would make holistic health and nutrition my life’s calling. While still working at my first job out of college, I enrolled in the Holistic Health Counseling Program at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition where I soaked up everything I could on numerous dietary theories, personalized nutrition and healthy lifestyle changes. I was very excited about what I was learning but also frustrated with the fact that I didn’t know all of this information much sooner. Wanting to spare other people from years of needless suffering, I eventually left my job in the communications field and threw myself into health coaching full-time. But as rewarding as it was helping my clients adapt healthier diets and habits, and in turn, recover from many chronic symptoms, I still came across a few individuals whose conditions were just too complex to fully respond to my advice. I observed a similar type of plateauing with my mom’s and my own health over the years as well. Although my mom felt better than she had in a very long time, she still had the occasional flares of mild joint pain, and her autoimmune antibodies were still detected on labs from time to time. And even though I had fewer and fewer episodes of debilitating fatigue and heart palpitations, I still suffered from frequent headaches, random nerve pain, sinus issues, adult acne, GI dysfunction and problems with blood pressure and blood sugar regulation. 

Motivated to find the missing link behind the stubborn symptoms that myself, my mom, and my clients were experiencing, I enrolled into medical school at the age of 30. I chose to pursue dual degrees in Chiropractic and Naturopathic medicines because their complementary philosophies of uncovering and reversing the root cause of disease resonated with me deeply. To say that I gained a ton of valuable knowledge during my 6 years in med school would be an understatement. But much to my surprise, I still encountered patients where a regimen of carefully chosen supplements, homeopathic remedies, anti-inflammatory nutrition, and/or musculoskeletal therapies just wasn’t enough. It would’ve been easy to write these outliers off as simple patient in-compliance, missed food sensitivities, or genetic anomalies, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else I was missing, and I also couldn’t ignore the fact that these complex patients seemed to share many physical and psychological characteristics. Most of them were highly analytical, ultra-sensitive and far beyond diligent with following treatment protocols. Most of them were also quite healthy before something triggered their chronic symptoms.

I knew intuitively that a crucial piece of the puzzle was still eluding me and so in my spare time, I scoured and devoured as many research studies, books, and seminars on the topic of complex/chronic disease as I could get my hands on. Slowly but surely, an overarching theme among those with strange, persistent symptoms began to emerge for me. Through the work of Deborah Cusack (The Cusack Protocol) and Dr. Sharon Meglathery (The RCCX Phenotype Theory), I discovered the very underrated yet crucial role that systemic connective tissue dysfunction plays in the expression of mysterious and misunderstood symptoms. I also learned that although Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and other connective tissue disorders may have a strong genetic component, various environmental factors (epigenetics)—such as prolonged stress, generational nutrient deficits and/or chronic pathogenic infections—can often trigger or worsen these genomic instabilities. It was also through the teachings of Anthony Williams (Medical Medium) and Dr. Kasia Kines (The Epstein Barr Virus Solution) that my eyes were further opened to the enormous influence that undiagnosed/untreated chronic pathogenic infections have on the severity and progression of complex conditions. Unfortunately, this also led to the realization that the theory of pathogenic connection to chronic, complex disease is often downplayed, if not blatantly rejected, by most health providers.

Furthermore, through the research and clinical expertise of nutritional pioneers like Dr. David Brownstein (The Iodine Protocol), Dr. Carolyn Dean (The Magnesium Miracle), Michael Mcavoy (Metabolic Healing) and Dr. Derrick Lonsdale (Thiamine Deficiency Disease), I learned about some of the most pervasive yet often neglected nutrient deficiencies in the majority of our population. I recognized the critical need for large and safe therapeutic dosing of specific nutrients such as iodine, magnesium and thiamine in order to not only prevent disease, but also reverse many perplexing symptoms. Last but not least, the brilliant work of Dr. Peter D’Adamo (Opus23) and Dr. Ben Lynch (Dirty Genes) in the fields of nutrigenomics and epigenetics further solidified my belief in the need for health solutions that are in-tune with one’s bio-individuality. I discovered that although we can’t change the genes we are born with, we can certainly reprogram them for the better if we personalize our diet, supplements, and lifestyle in a way that respects our specific genetic variations.

Equipped with the research and recommendations of these and many other experts, I eventually arrived at a place where I felt like I could provide even the most complex patient cases with some concrete and lasting solutions. Since then I’ve been able to help hundreds of people to finally understand their bodies more fully and reclaim their health, including my mom and myself! And so, if you’re one of those individuals who is still searching high and low for answers to your chronic symptoms, please know that there is no one else like you but also that you are not alone. I would be honored to be your guide and support on this journey of self-discovery and to show you that lasting health truly does begin by first decoding yourself. If anything about my story resonated with you, I invite you to reach out and share yours!

Yours in health,

Dr. Dec