Let’s see, what might you want to know about me? I was born March 4, 1994 (because I’ll never remember to update this if I put my current age). I have a degree in Nutrition that I in no way use professionally. I’m an INFJ and Enneagram 1. I live in Raleigh, NC with my dog and two cats, but I prefer the cold (although I’ve never lived up north, so take that for what you will).
I started this blog in college after being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (a chronic autoimmune digestive disease), and it mainly functioned as an outlet for my rants and ramblings about nutrition and gut health as I navigated my rocky relationship with my colon. (We have since divorced due to irreconcilable differences.)
I’ve dabbled in just about every crazy diet you can think of in an attempt to fix my digestive woes, as well as everything from electroacupuncture to fecal microbiota transplants. I also find myself increasingly immersed in the world of functional orthodontics and all the fun fringe topics that come along with that.
I hesitate to even try to characterize what this website is now, but I think a fair assessment is that it’s a haphazard documentation of my own health experiments, as well as somewhere I can write about topics of interest in a more organized and helpful way (when I feel like it). And I reserve the right to rant cantankerously about things that I should probably stop getting so worked up over. I also reserve the right to overuse words like ‘cantankerously.’
Most recently, I’ve been hard at work on the IBD Index, which I hope will eventually be the most comprehensive and helpful free resource about non-standard-of-care options for inflammatory bowel disease on the internet.
When I’m not sporadically shouting into the void of the internet, I like to read books that are too smart for me, play piano and guitar, and fix parts of my house that probably don’t need fixing.
For more about me, you can check out my post About Alyssa: Background, Biases, and Philosophy on Health and Disease.