The understanding is in the doing

Time to actually use this page.

This picture is from a 5K over the summer. A lot of people spoke that day about navigating life with chronic Lyme, and the hope of real improvement with the right team. My wife Evey talked about how misunderstood the diagnosis and treatment still are, and what improvement can look like outside the traditional model.

My daughter had done most of our runs riding in the stroller, watching. That day she hopped out and ran to the finish line herself.
Watching taught her a little. Running taught her the rest.

You can read every book on running and still not know how to run. The understanding is in the doing.

Yeah yeah, I know. Running is intuitive.
Finding the root cause of someone's Hashimoto's thyroiditis is not. That takes first principles thinking.

I'm a Doctor of Pharmacy, a certified sports nutritionist (CISSN) and a certified LDN specialist. But the titles aren't the point.
Plenty of people with a PhD or a doctorate know the algorithms and never get back to first principles.

And some of the people who've done the most good for others' health have no titles at all. With the tools we have now, the ones who keep digging and keep getting better can understand things better than people at the highest levels.

What I'm proud of is the work. Over a decade of it behind the scenes.

Hundreds of consultations, lectures and presentations around the Fox Valley, creating dietary supplements, helping patients at the counter, working alongside some great practitioners and functional medicine doctors, and being a resource for pharmacists and providers all over the state.

My favorite person to work alongside is my wife, the Fusion FNP.
Same story with her. Trauma RN at UW Hospital, then primary care at Aurora, then deep into integrative medicine with an A4M fellowship, advanced homeopathy certification through RMDY and a ton of coursework across other fields.
Everything I share here is years of that boiled down.

Heres what we've learned.
Conventional medicine is amazing at some things.
Functional medicine is amazing at others.
The magic happens when they work together.

Most days I feel like a translator between the two.
With the right providers, they go hand in hand. I've seen it over and over.
With closed minds on either side, they don't. I've seen that too.

Full disclosure, AI helps me draft some of these.
The ideas are mine and I get the final say on every word.
I'd never find the time otherwise. Most of these get talked out on my phone after the kids are down.

You'll see a lot of pictures from runs with my son and daughter. That's where most of my thinking happens.

More soon