Why I became the doctor
I wish my Dad had.

A loss that became a calling.

My father had been in poor health for as long as I could remember. When I was 12 years old, my mother ran outside and told me my Dad had suffered a massive heart attack at work. I just froze on the sidewalk in front of my house, confused and terrified. "Don't heart attacks only happen to old people?" Dad was only in his mid 50s. "What if I never see my dad alive again?"

Thankfully, through God's grace and the expertise of the surgeons, he pulled through that day. Modern medicine had successfully kept him alive — but unfortunately, it would never help him truly heal.

From that point on, my memories of my father are marked by fatigue, depression, pain, weight gain, and frustration. A quiet heaviness settled over him and got worse year after year.

Every visit to his doctor was the same. Each new complaint was met with more medications. By the time he passed away, he was on 15 medications for over 10 chronic degenerative diseases.

But what hurts most isn't the diagnoses. It's what those diagnoses cost him. Energy. Clarity. Joy. Hope.

What made the fact that my father had died at 69 years old even more jarring was that just months earlier, I had experienced my own health crisis.

In the middle of chiropractic school — juggling classes all day, working part-time jobs at night, volunteering at church on the weekend, and somehow trying to be a good husband and father — I began to slowly unravel.

I stopped sleeping. My gut was bloated and inflamed. I was losing weight in an unhealthy way. My skin was breaking out. I felt anxious, depleted, depressed, and mentally foggy.

It was humbling and scary. I felt like a fraud. I was studying to become a doctor — someone who would guide others toward health — and I couldn't even stabilize my own.

Fortunately, my nutrition professor was a pioneer in natural and functional medicine. He took me under his wing and showed me exactly what was happening and what was the root cause of the issues.

With my wife's steady encouragement, we changed how we ate. We addressed food sensitivities. We made time to exercise. We lowered the external demands on my time and dialed down the internal pressure I was carrying. We became intentional about how we lived.

Healing did not happen overnight. But it did happen.

Little by little, my sleep returned. My digestion stabilized. My mood lifted. My mind cleared. The fog dissipated. I started to feel strong again — not just physically, but emotionally.

That experience taught me something powerful: The body is designed to heal when we create the right environment.

Sitting on that plane, holding the contrast of these two experiences in my mind at the same time, was transformative. What if someone had shown my Dad a different path? What if he had worked with someone to guide him toward health? What if he believed that he could get better?

In that moment, my father's suffering became the catalyst for my life's work.

Right then and there, I made a commitment to be the type of doctor who could have helped my Dad. Someone who would take the time to really listen. Someone who would teach his clients how their daily habits shape their future. Someone who would walk beside them as they rebuild their health foundation.

That's what I've been doing for the past 27 years.