Overcoming Chronic GI Symptoms and Joint Pain Through Root Cause Functional Medicine

Hi, I'm Sharlyn Price and I'm from Glenside, Pennsylvania. My GI symptoms started in 2020, and I tried many gastroenterologists and tried to go, like, the traditional medicine route, and they just kept putting band-aids on the problem, just like medicine after medicine after medicine, and just almost kind of, like, really not listening to me and what I was telling them. It was affecting my quality of life, my day to day activities. I couldn't eat a lot of foods and I wasn't sure why, and I felt horrible. Like, it affected how I lived my life on a daily basis. So it was quite terrible until I met Dr. Staid. So when I first met with Dr. Staid, she was amazing and actually sat down and listened to me and it was the first time a doctor kind of put aside, I think it was a full hour and a half or whatever it was, of just listening to me and hearing me and then coming up with a plan kind of right away. So first thing, she wanted a full blood work workup just to see where my numbers were so she knew what she was dealing with. And she suggested that I go on the Whole 30 Diet way of eating. And I was very receptive to everything she asked because at that point, I was so desperate to just fix what was going on with me. So I dove right in and I started the Whole 30 Diet and she didn't want me on it for 30 days, she actually had me on it probably for closer to almost 3 months just to fully, like, reset my system. I would say 5 to 7 days of doing the whole 30. I felt completely different. Like, my stomach responded right away. I felt great, I had energy, my joints stopped aching. So after that one week, I'm like, "oh, yeah, I can do this for as long as it takes 'cause I just feel so good." So once the blood work came back, I met with her again and she suggested a whole bunch of supplements and I bought right in, just because she helped me so much for those past 2-3 months. I completely trusted everything she told me. I can eat. I can go out to restaurants and feel confident that I can choose something on the menu that won't put me in pain for like the next five to seven days. I can exercise without my joints aching. I mean, I can walk up and down the stairs without me saying, like, "why does my whole body hurt?" It's just because I was so, I had so much inflammation all throughout my body because of how my stomach and my digestive system was reacting to all the foods that I shouldn't be eating and then all the deficiencies that I was experiencing because I was not getting the right nutrition. What I really appreciate about Dr. Staid is that she will first start with the supplement route and giving your body what it needs, replenishing it in a natural way, but she's different than from other functional medicine doctors, I feel, where they kind of would totally shy away from traditional medicine. She's more than willing to do what's best for the patient. So if that is supplements plus, "Hey, I think this prescription would really help you." She'll do that. She listens to people. She actually, like, she hears you and she'll do whatever it takes to get you to a level that you want to be at, not that she wants you to be at. I feel in my journey, a lot of traditional medicine doctors just wanted to put band aids on my situation and it made it worse, and it took me so much longer to get to a better place with her only because so much damage had been done already because I just put Band-Aid on Band-Aid on Band-Aid. So I actually, I hesitate going back to traditional medicine. I do when I need to. But I would always, I start with her first. Always, always.