My name is Wendy Dewey.  I’m a certified health coach and a functional nutritionist. 

I was raised in a traditional meat and potatoes family where school lunches consisted of a sandwich, chips, and a Hostess cake. Breakfast was sugary cereal during the week and bacon, eggs and doughnuts on the weekends. My siblings now joke that my new love of nutrition is a rebellion against the diet on which I was raised. In college, I ran Division 1 track and cross country at Providence College in Rhode Island, where nutrition sadly was not part of our training despite an intense workout schedule. I now live in New Canaan, CT with my husband and our dog, Bear. We raised our 4 kids here; only our youngest is still in College (Go Hoos!) and we have two beautiful grandchildren.   

After all our kids were settled in school, I had time to think about the next chapter of my life.  Taking care of my children and aging parents had changed my priorities and thinking about living a long, healthy life became central to my daily routine. I felt like there were always health battles popping up from chronic stomach aches with the kids to dementia to heart disease, and when I spoke about these things with my friends it became clear that my situation was far from unique. It seemed as if everyone had a different chronic health concern with themselves or a loved one. I refused to accept that this should be normal. I went back to school to study nutrition, health, and wellness and learned how to cook a whole-food, plant-based diet for all stages of life. 

As I began to look into chronic disease, my work kept bringing me back to nutrition and, more importantly, the microbiome, which is the focus of my study today. Our microbiome seems to be the key to living well, longer. The way we eat, sleep, exercise, socialize and interact with the world greatly affects which and how many microbes inhabit our gut. A robust and diverse microbiome is strongly indicative of a healthy, well-balanced person while many mental and physical health deficiencies could be indicative of imbalances in the gut.