My Story

Hello!

My name is Sarah! I’m the founder of Nourished Physician! I am a third year family medicine resident who lives in upstate New York. I am currently working on completing my residency in Family Medicine. I have a strong affinity for health and wellness that has been resonant throughout my short medical career. Here’s my backstory to regaining health:

When I was 16 I received the third Gardasil vaccination. Soon afterwards, I began to experience terrible nausea and fatigue. I felt incredibly wiped out and weak. This kept me in and out of school for about three weeks. Doctor’s didn’t really think much of it, except that it was some virus that would go away. I spent a good amount of time resting at home and sitting in my bed catching up on schoolwork and watching movies.

Soon after, I started to experience joint pains. At first, it didn’t seem like anything, but soon it became a daily nagging pain. It again stayed with accompanying fatigue. I also lost 15 pounds in a matter of a few months without any dietary modifications. I went to my primary, saw rheumatology and had numerous vials of blood drawn to determine that I, thankfully, did not have rheumatoid arthritis, lupus or any other autoimmune disease. Still no answers.

This joint pain and fatigue continued on throughout the rest of high school. It was something I learned to live with and had good days and bad days. I continued to get easily fatigued and often spent my evenings going to bed early.

I started college and my symptoms were still present, but nothing changed and something I continued to live with. During sophmore year, my friend came to stay overnight. I don’t remember how the conversation started, but somehow we started talking about vitamin D deficiency and I came into a link of symptoms of people with gluten intolerance have vitamin D deficiency. Things seemed to click. The joint pain, fatigue, digestive issues that had plagued me for years (without ever realizing it) all pointed to having gluten intolerance. I researched it all night and decided I was going to go “gluten free” the next day. Mind you, I was living in dorms without a car in 2009. Gluten free products were available, but man a lot of them were not as tasty as they are today.

Soon after I was tested for celiacs disease. The results were negative and I was eating gluten free for a month prior and I refused to go back to a gluten-filled life. I felt amazing. The brain fog lifted, joint pain went away, fatigue lifted, digestion better than ever. I couldn’t believe it. It took some convincing to my family that I needed to eat this way, but they eventually came on board.

Fast forward to 2014. I was in medical school. Constantly stressed, constantly studying and on top of that I decided to run and do half marathons. I had fatigue, clumps of hair loss, weight gain, always felt cold, acne, insomnia, anxiety through the roof, felt depressed and isolated. I searched for answers as my test results appeared fine. I continued to run and started to do half marathons and even attempted a full marathon, but I remember feeling so burnt out at mile 20 on my long training run that I just walked home after that and decided to put running to rest. I searched for functional or alternative physicians that day. I found a physician that helped treat all the symptoms I had. I drove from med school (that was 2.5 hours away). I finally had my experience with functional medicine.

Seeing the functional medicine doctor, I discovered people who took a history that started with birth and continued throughout childhood, how things were connected, how there were optimal lab values, particularly for hormones. I discovered I had hypothyroidism and other hormonal dysfunction, likely continued gut dysfunction from either food intolerances and bacterial overgrowth. I was placed on various supplements, a diet to heal my gut (AIP) and to cut back on exercise and to increase my stress reduction techniques.

I was still young and didn’t realize the implications of overworking my stressed body and mind. I continued to exercise, but did shorter runs or still did hour long HIIT workouts, I changed my diet, but things still didn’t completely heal. Then I got married and wanted to start a family.

Luckily I was able to get pregnant right away, but soon after experienced an early first trimester miscarriage. I didn’t understand why it happened to me when I took such good care of myself. However, reflecting back, the month before my wedding I was not eating properly because I was stressed about planning things nor eating enough to nourish myself, let alone another person. I still continued to work out and did not do any meditation or stress reductive exercises. I discovered I had 2 MTHFR mutations, but did not have any other antibodies that would cause miscarriage. I was thankful for that and my thyroid was optimized.

I started doing fertility yoga, I started eating more and exercising less. I tried to relax more and imagine myself pregnant. I tried to do more yoga. I was still depressed and upset it happened, but tried to push the grief back. I was able to conceive my oldest daughter 3 months later. The pregnancy was healthy and full term. It was a wonderful experience. I planned a natural home birth with a midwife. However, 20 hours of labor later, it was discovered that the baby was breech. The midwife and doctor on call at the hospital did not feel comfortable delivering vaginally and I had a c-section. Then to put a cherry on top of it, due to her being c-section, she had transient tachypnea and elevated bandemia, she required a 1 week NICU stay for antibiotics and respiratory support. I was unable to hold her for the first 2 days of life and required pumping to help my milk come in. This was not the birth nor the postpartum life I imagined. My house was a mess and despite having good support surrounding us, no one offered to clean it. So post-partum day 4 while still recovering from a c-section, I helped my husband clean our entire apartment instead of resting like I should’ve. I walked down the block to the hospital daily after parking. I did not care for myself as I should’ve. Thankfully my daughter was healthy enough to breastfeed well and able to come home safely after a week. But I was in medical school and required returning to work 1 week after her birth. Thankfully my first month back was an easy rotation that allowed me to be at home with her.

I started residency with her at 4 months. I continued to heal but still had traumatic thoughts regarding that birth. We wanted to have another baby soon after my older daughter was born. I found I was pregnant again when my daughter was almost 1 year old. I was still nursing. We planned to go to Italy during my vacation and I started spotting on that trip. I knew things were not going well as I continued to spot for another few weeks. I finally asked my midwife for an ultrasound to find the baby’s heartbeat was very slow and then on repeat it had stopped. I waited 3 weeks to have a natural miscarriage after I discovered the news, as I was nervous to have another D&C like I did for the first miscarriage.

After that miscarriage, I continued to have excessively heavy menstrual bleeding, felt cold and fatigued again. My insurance had coverage for acupuncture and decided I wanted to try that. I went and found relief in stress reduction and some balance doing that. She provided dietary advice, to eat more warming foods, lot of meat and broth. I started to do so and I found out I was pregnant again 3 months later without trying. However, I started to have bleeding 1 week later and figured it would be another early miscarriage. I bled for a week and then it finished, so I thought. I was at work a week later when I started to have large gushes of blood and clots. That weekend I laid on the couch and tried not to move too much. I couldn’t have a D&C because the hcg level kept rising. I couldn’t be an effective mother to my daughter and felt guilty. I finally was able to have a D&C and recovered well from that. I started an inpatient service a few days later, working 60 hours a week.

After that month, I continued to do my fertility yoga, go to acupuncture when I had time and could afford it, started eating high fat and lower carb. I found “To Make a Mommy” and found support with those women. I found support in women who also experienced loss and hardship. I started doing daily meditation. I started to pray. I relaxed more to the best of my ability.

Then I conceived my second miracle. This pregnancy was amazing and even healthier than my previous. I had less morning sickness and felt great other than the first trimester fatigue. I had a VBAC and was able to do skin to skin and breastfeed right away. It was a dream come true.

During my second pregnancy, I had the opportunity to go to Tuscon, Arizona for an elective month doing the Integrative Medicine month for Residents and Medical Students. It was a beyond amazing experience that encompassed so many things that I love and wish to bring to my patients. It incorporated all types of nutritional, mind and spirit healing and it helped me to let go of a lot of fears I had with my second pregnancy. I felt more connected and I wanted to be able to share that with others.

Through my difficulties with pregnancy, I knew I eventually wanted to help other women who had difficulty with their fertility and losses. I knew it was something I was meant to do. I knew that helping people through integrative and functional medicine was my calling. I know that is the reason I was supposed to become a doctor.