I know what it feels like to have to fight for your health.

At age 20, I underwent open-heart surgery.

I was a sick teenager — struggling with autoimmune disease, severe food allergies, and medications that were quietly making my heart condition worse. To the outside world, I looked almost normal. But inside, my biology was failing. The doctors I saw were dismissive. They looked at my labs, told me everything was fine, and sent me home.

It wasn't until I found a functional health doctor — Dr. Bandy — that someone finally showed me a path to truly heal.

That experience is the reason I became a doctor.

Driven by my own recovery, I threw myself into the science of human biology. As a pre-med undergraduate, I became the youngest student at my university to publish in endocrinology. I published three times in juried journals, ran my own research budget, and spent three years working in the hospital pathology lab — learning exactly how the body breaks down, and exactly how to build it back up.