Why I Dropped Out of Residency to Pursue Functional Medicine

When I’m asked the question “why I left residency”—I have to be honest and say “there’s no simple answer.”

Does it start with my frustration with the medical system? With the fact that I barely saw my baby boy, only catching a couple of hours with him each day while grinding away in a system that didn’t care about me? Or was it the soul crushing fatigue of being a cog in a machine that runs on bureaucracy and burnout? The “let’s-have-a-meeting-but-change-nothing” mindset? The truth is—it was all of it.

I was in a four-year pathology residency and genuinely loved the work. For those who don’t know, pathology is the study of disease—what causes it, how it develops, how to diagnose it, and how it affects the body. I found it fascinating and loved the microscopic world of disease.

From the start of my medical journey, I knew that traditional medicine wasn’t centered around health—it was built around diagnosing and managing disease. I went in with my eyes open to that fact. But what I didn’t realize was just how deep that disconnect really ran. It wasn’t just a lack of focus on prevention or optimization—it was a system that largely ignored the “pre-disease” state altogether. Across almost every specialty, the approach is reactive, not proactive. You wait for disease to show up before doing anything about it.

One moment that stands out to me happened while I was rotating on GI pathology. I was reviewing biopsies from a woman experiencing chronic gastrointestinal symptoms—things like nausea, bloating and fluctuating constipation and diarrhea. Classic stuff that millions struggle with. Under the microscope, I saw she had an increased number of lymphoid aggregates—clusters of immune cells—in her gut. It wasn’t “normal,” but it wasn’t a disease either. I told my attending, “We can’t just call this normal, because it’s not.” He agreed. But since the finding was “non-specific,” it wasn’t considered diagnostically helpful.

I remember thinking: This is pre-disease. This could be the beginning of IBS, IBD, or another chronic issue. Yet, in conventional medicine, if labs are normal, the advice is usually something like: “Try to eat better. Maybe avoid gluten. Good luck.” In functional medicine, we ask: Why is this happening? What’s the root cause? That perspective was missing in the world I was in, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

I must admit that I am pretty idealistic and a hopeful person—I want change. I believe in a better system – one that not only centers around the health of patients but the health of physicians. In the current model, physicians are worked insane hours, expected to see 40 patients a day in 15 minute increments, all for decreasing reimbursements and no appreciation. The reason your physician doesn’t always provide you what you need is because they literally can’t in the current model. I felt myself becoming cynical, just trying to survive.

While in residency, I started working on the side with premenopausal and menopausal women, helping with hormone balance. And what I found stunned me. Almost everything I was taught about estrogen—in both pharmacy and medical school—was either outdated or just flat-out wrong. Estrogen plays a crucial role in women’s health, and no one seemed to be talking about it in the way that truly helps people. This only continued to deepen my frustration.

By the start of my third year of residency, I hit a wall. I was balancing motherhood—which had quickly become one of the most meaningful parts of my life—along with marriage, friendships, side projects, and personal passions… and I crashed. The exhaustion was bone-deep. I stepped away to breathe and reflect. I still loved the work, but the thought of spending the rest of my life within that system felt suffocating.

Shortly after making the decision to step away, I discovered I had autoimmune thyroiditis. This was discovered by running functional labs on myself which revealed elevated autoimmune and inflammatory markers. That was a wake-up call. All this time I had been trying to balance everything in my life—but I had been ignoring my own health.

So now, I’m focused on healing myself. And helping others do the same.

Leaving residency wasn’t easy. I’ll miss the work. I’ll miss pathology. But I know, without a doubt, that leaving was the best decision I could have made. I’m still obsessed with the pathology of the human body—just from a different lens now.

Even if some aspects of functional medicine are seen as too “crazy” or “out there” by many in conventional medicine, I remain open. Open to learning, to listening, to digging into anything that might help someone feel better. Healing isn’t always linear, and it doesn’t always fit neatly into a textbook. We have to be honest with ourselves: if something isn’t working—whether it’s a system, a relationship, or a way of living—it’s on us to recognize that and be willing to change it.

Because if you don’t? Your body will eventually force you to.

Change is hard. But if I’m going to be a physician who asks people to make changes, I have to live it too.

And for me, that started with walking away from residency.