What is your background?
I am a board-certified general surgeon and have been practicing for over 12 years all of which have been in Montana. I am originally from the East Coast and did my surgical training in Seattle. While I am a surgeon, my undergraduate degree is in history, and I appreciate the larger socioeconomic perspective that that has given me.
What led you to start the Center for Holistic Surgery?
During Covid, I began learning about functional medicine and wellness. There was a day when I was going to get a massage and walked by numerous wellness practitioner offices in that same office and it hit me that I was not providing the best care for my patients who undergo an enormous amount of emotional and physical stress during surgery. It dawned on me that my patients were struggling with sleep, stress, optimizing, nutrition, and an affected micro biome, all of which should be optimized. To do this right and give holistic care to each patient, I opened the Center for Holistic Surgery.
Why is a holistic approach to surgery so important?
Surgery is stressful to the patient in a way that most of medicine (and life for that matter) is not. Caring for the whole person empowers the patient to take control where normally they have none all while reducing risks and optimizing outcomes.
What services do you provide to help patients through their surgery experience? What is unique about them?
I offer a highly personalized approach to improving sleep, stress, nutrition, diet, and the microbiome, all of which are affected by surgical disease or injury and use my expertise in surgery to prepare them specifically for what I know they’ll be going through. This includes taking measures to counteract the anesthesia, positioning during surgery, surgical tools used, even down to how they’re strapped or taped to the table. Some operations induce the same stress response as a high-speed motor vehicle crash, and this approach gives the patients the best way to navigate that journey. Most health improvements done before surgery, called prehab, focus on exercise and improving blood pressure and diabetes. My approach takes I to account the whole being.
How can people learn more and see if they're a good fit to work with you?
They can take me up on a free phone consultation as well as check out my website and blogs to learn more. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been able to augment their surgical journey in some way by talking and working with me. We all need a hand when going through stressful times and no one should feel alone going into the operating room.