I became the doctor I could not find.

I spent my late twenties being an excellent patient. I went to the appointments, I took the paperwork seriously, and I accepted the answer I was given, which was that my exhaustion was stress and my cycle was simply like that. It took six years and a doctor in Seattle who ran one extra panel to find the iron deficiency that had been there the entire time.

I was not failed by bad people. I was failed by a system built to rule out disease in twelve minute appointments, which is a genuinely good thing to be built for and a terrible thing to be the only option available.

So I trained at Bastyr, I built a practice around long appointments and wide testing, and I started writing down my reasoning because the thing that changed my own life was not a supplement. It was finally understanding what was happening to me.

Fourteen years later that is still the job. Test properly, read carefully, explain completely, and say the honest thing even when it is not what the person in front of me hoped to hear.

Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine. Bastyr University, 2011. Licensed in Oregon, license number ND-4471.

Advanced Fellow, Menopause Society. Certified menopause practitioner since 2019.

Residency. Two years in integrative endocrinology at a Portland teaching clinic, focused on thyroid and insulin resistance.

Writing. The Bold Print, a twice monthly essay on what the reference range leaves out. Roughly 9,000 readers.

Teaching. Guest lecturer on perimenopause assessment for two naturopathic programs in the Pacific Northwest.