Diarrhea

Yuying Luo, MD, is an assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai West and Morningside in New York City. She aims to deliver evidence-based, patient-centered, and holistic care for her patients.

Her clinical and research focus includes patients with disorders of gut-brain interaction such as irritable bowel syndrome and functional dyspepsia; patients with lower gastrointestinal motility (constipation) disorders and defecatory and anorectal disorders (such as dyssynergic defecation); and women’s gastrointestinal health.

She graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in molecular and cellular biology and received her MD from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. She completed her residency in internal medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she was also chief resident. She completed her gastroenterology fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital and was also chief fellow.

Stephanie Young Moss, PharmD, has worked in pharmacy, community outreach, regulatory compliance, managed care, and health economics and outcomes research. Dr. Young Moss is the owner of Integrative Pharmacy Outcomes and Consulting, which focuses on educating underserved communities on ways to reduce and prevent health disparities. She uses her platform to educate families on ways to decrease and eliminate health disparities by incorporating wellness and mental health techniques.

Young Moss is the creator of the websites DrStephanieYoMo.com and MenopauseInColor.com, providing practical health and wellness tips and resources for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause. She has over 100,000 people in her social media communities. She has also contributed to Pharmacy Times and shared her views on international and national podcasts and local television news.

She has served on various boards for organizations that focus on health equity, decreasing implicit bias, addressing social determinants of health, and empowering communities to advocate for their health. She has also been on the boards for the Minority Health Coalition of Marion County and Eskenazi Health Center, for which she was the clinical quality committee chair and board secretary and is currently the board treasurer. She is a board member for Community Action of Greater Indianapolis.

Kara Andrew, RDN, LDN, is the director of health promotion for Memorial Hospital in Carthage, Illinois. She is also licensed as an exercise physiologist and certified in lifestyle medicine by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. Her experience includes corporate wellness, teaching for the American College of Sports Medicine, sports nutrition, weight management, integrative medicine, oncology support, and dialysis.

She earned her master's in exercise and nutrition science at Lipscomb University.

Andrew has served as a president and board member of the Nashville Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She was recently elected a co-chair of the fitness and medicine group in the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

Allison Buttarazzi, MD, is board-certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine, and is a certified health and well-being coach. In her primary care practice, Dr. Buttarazzi focuses on lifestyle medicine to help her patients improve their health and longevity, and her passion is helping patients prevent and reverse chronic diseases (like heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes) by improving their lifestyle habits.

She is a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine and completed a residency at Maine Medical Center. Diagnosed with celiac disease during medical school, she realized the power of improving one's health through diet and lifestyle habits, which she later incorporated into her practice.

Waseem Ahmed, MD, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Karsh Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and serves as Director, Advanced Inflammatory Bowel Disease Fellowship and Education within the F. Widjaja Inflammatory Bowel Disease Institute.

He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and attended medical school at Indiana University. He then completed an internal medicine residency at New York University, followed by a fellowship in gastroenterology and hepatology at Indiana University, and an advanced fellowship in inflammatory bowel disease at the Jill Roberts Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medicine. Prior to his current role, Dr. Ahmed served as an assistant professor of medicine within the Crohn’s and Colitis Center at the University of Colorado from 2021-2024.

Dr. Ahmed is passionate about providing innovative, comprehensive, and compassionate care for all patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). His research interests include IBD medical education for patients, providers, and trainees; clinical trials; acute severe ulcerative colitis; and the use of combined advanced targeted therapy in high-risk IBD.

He enjoys spending time with his wife and dog, is an avid follower of professional tennis, and enjoys fine dining.

Ira Daniel Breite, MD, is a board-certified internist and gastroenterologist. He is an associate professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he also sees patients and helps run an ambulatory surgery center.

Dr. Breite divides his time between technical procedures, reading about new topics, and helping patients with some of their most intimate problems. He finds the deepest fulfillment in the long-term relationships he develops and is thrilled when a patient with irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease improves on the regimen he worked with them to create.

Breite went to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for medical school, followed by a residency at NYU and Bellevue Hospital and a gastroenterology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Working in city hospitals helped him become resourceful and taught him how to interact with people from different backgrounds.

Jennifer Payne, MD, is a physician at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health.

She earned her bachelor's from the University of St. Thomas, majoring in biochemistry and minoring in theology. She was the first service learning assistant for the service learning program and did extensive volunteer work with Open Arms of Minnesota during this time, including building a library on multiple sclerosis information. She obtained her MD from the Georgetown University School of Medicine, where she was part of the first class to run the Hoya Clinic for people without housing. She also completed an elective in medical writing and editing, working with American Family Physician magazine. Dr. Payne completed her residency in family medicine at Lancaster General Hospital and a primary care sports medicine fellowship at Wellspan Health in York, Pennsylvania. 

She has served on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine and assisted in obtaining speakers and clinical case studies for the physician portion of the conference.

She enjoys reading, all sports (particularly Olympic weightlifting), walking her dog, and spending time with her husband, sons, and their extended family.

Michael Natter, MD, is a clinical assistant professor in the department of medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City. Fusing his background in fine art with his medical practice, he creates medical illustrations and comics to both educate his patients, colleagues, and medical students as well as explore the emotional and human side of medicine. His work has been featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Annals of Internal Medicine, Medscape, BuzzFeed, and others.

Dr. Natter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a child and became interested in medicine at a young age. He initially began his studies in studio art but ultimately attended the Sidney Kimmel Medical College before returning to his home in New York City to complete his internal medicine residency and fellowship.

Reyna Franco, RDN, is a New York City–based dietitian-nutritionist, certified specialist in sports dietetics, and certified personal trainer. She is a diplomate of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and has a master's degree in nutrition and exercise physiology from Columbia University.

In her private practice, she provides medical nutrition therapy for weight management, sports nutrition, diabetes, cardiac disease, renal disease, gastrointestinal disorders, cancer, food allergies, eating disorders, and childhood nutrition. To serve her diverse patients, she demonstrates cultural sensitivity and knowledge of customary food practices. She applies the tenets of lifestyle medicine to reduce the risk of chronic disease and improve health outcomes for her patients.

Franco is also a corporate wellness consultant who conducts wellness counseling and seminars for organizations of every size. She taught sports nutrition to medical students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, taught life cycle nutrition and nutrition counseling to undergraduate students at LaGuardia Community College, and precepts nutrition students and interns. She created the sports nutrition rotation for the New York Distance Dietetic Internship program.

She is the chair of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine's Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist Member Interest Group. She is also the treasurer and secretary of the New York State Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, having previously served in many other leadership roles for the organization, including as past president, awards committee chair, and grant committee chair, among others. She is active in the local Greater New York Dietetic Association and Long Island Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, too.

Natalia Johnsen, MD, practices internal medicine and lifestyle medicine. She works as an internist for the Vancouver Clinic in Vancouver, Washington.

Johnsen trained and worked as ob-gyn in Russia before coming to the United States in 2000. Subsequently, she interned in internal medicine at the University of Nevada and completed her residency at a Stanford-affiliated program in Santa Clara, California. After that she worked as a general internist for two years before to switching to full-time hospital work.

Johnsen has always been fascinated by the effects that lifestyle can have on physical and mental health, and she fell in love with the concept of lifestyle medicine as a specialty after seeing patients struggle with issues that could have been prevented had they known more about a healthy lifestyle. To make an impact on her patients through lifestyle interventions, she launched her own lifestyle medicine clinic, Vivalso Health and Longevity.

Julie Cunningham has been a registered dietitian for more than 25 years. She is a certified diabetes care and education specialist (CDCES) and an international board-certified lactation consultant. She has served as the president of the Foothills Chapter of the North Carolina Dietetics Association (NCDA) and has been a member of the executive board of the NCDA.

Ms. Cunningham received a bachelor's degree from Appalachian State University in North Carolina. She subsequently completed a master's degree in public health nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ms. Cunningham has worked in women's and children's health, cardiology, and diabetes. She is the author of 30 Days to Tame Type 2 Diabetes, and she has also written for Abbott Nutrition News, Edgepark Medical Health Insights, diaTribe, Babylist, and others.

A resident of beautiful western North Carolina, Cunningham is an avid reader who enjoys yoga, travel, and all things chocolate.

Sylvia Klinger, DBA, MS, RD, CPT, is an internationally recognized nutrition expert who is relentlessly passionate about helping people fall in love with creating and enjoying delicious, safe, and nutritious foods.

As a food and nutrition communications professional, Dr. Klinger is a global nutrition professor, award-winning author, and the founder of Hispanic Food Communications.

She is on the board at Global Rise to build a formal community nutrition program as part of an ambitious initiative to create a regenerative food system in Uganda in partnership with tribal and community leaders. This program included an extensive training session on food safety and sanitation that displayed cultural sensitivity and various communication strategies and incentives to spread these important food safety and sanitation messages into the communities.

Her Hispanic background fuels her passion for nutrition, leading her to empower and encourage those in her community through the foods they enjoy in their kitchens. At the same time, she understands everyone’s needs are different and seeks to individualize nutrition and exercise to best fit each person and their journey to a happy, safe, and healthy life.

Her latest book, The Little Book of Simple Eating, was published in 2018 in both Spanish and English.

In her spare time, Klinger explores food and culture all over the world with her family, realizing the power a healthy lifestyle has to keep people together.

Michelle Seguin, MD, is a board-certified family medicine, lifestyle medicine, and certified functional medicine physician (IFMCP). She is a practicing physician at Root Functional Medicine, a leading telemedicine practice specializing in personalized, root-cause care.

Kayli Anderson has over a decade of experience in nutrition, culinary education, and lifestyle medicine. She believes that eating well should be simple, pleasurable, and sustainable. Anderson has worked with clients from all walks of life, but she currently specializes in nutrition therapy and lifestyle medicine for women. She’s the founder of PlantBasedMavens.com, a hub for women to get evidence-based, practical, and woman-centered guidance on nutrition and cooking, hormone health, fertility, pregnancy, movement, mental well-being, nontoxic living, and more.

Anderson is board-certified in lifestyle medicine and serves as lead faculty of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s (ACLM) "Food as Medicine" course. She is past chair of the ACLM's registered dietitian member interest group, secretary of the women's health member interest group, and nutrition faculty for many of ACLM's other course offerings. She is the coauthor of the Plant-Based Nutrition Quick Start Guide and works with many of the leading organizations in nutrition and lifestyle medicine to develop nutrition content, recipes, and educational programs.

Anderson frequently speaks on the topics of women’s health and plant-based nutrition and has coauthored two lifestyle medicine textbooks, including the first one on women’s health, Improving Women's Health Across the Lifespan.

She received a master's degree in nutrition and physical performance and is certified as an exercise physiologist and intuitive eating counselor. She's a student of herbal medicine and women's integrative and functional medicine. She lives with her husband in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where you’ll find her out on a trail or in her garden.