An Introduction to the Practice

My name is Dr. Stephen Michael Nenninger, NMD — Steve. I went west to study naturopathic medicine in 1991, when I was 28. School was hard because I was already sick. From about age 22 I had ulcerative colitis: boring, painful, exhausting, and embarrassing. On the worst days I went to the bathroom dozens of times, day and night.

I tried conventional doctors first. Their drugs made me sicker and did not help. The last conventional physician I saw sat in a Park Avenue office with a mahogany desk and leather-bound volumes on the wall and told me the only options were to have my colon removed and live on drugs, or die.

Neither option sounded right. As I walked out he called down the hall, “You’ll be dead in six months.” Instead of dying or losing my colon I went to a naturopathic doctor. He did not do much that changed the disease. He did one remarkable thing: he believed I could heal. He was the first doctor who did.

After 18 months with him, and little improvement, I entered naturopathic medical school. I had no money. I figured if I died it would not matter, and if I lived the loans would be worthwhile. The professors and classmates were extraordinary. I still had colitis when I graduated.

I began practice in New York and soon had a full schedule. Patients taught me. I helped resolve many cases of colitis and Crohn’s disease — and I was still not well. I was not worse, and I was incrementally better, but that was not enough.

After 20 years in practice I was still managing symptoms, not curing them. To keep the symptoms in check I had to avoid gluten, egg, dairy, nightshade, salicylate, FODMAP foods, and fructose. I could eat very little without symptoms. That did not feel like health. My children, then in their teens, seemed as reactive as I was, despite a thoroughly naturopathic upbringing.

Then it got worse. My 17-year-old son developed mononucleosis, then inflammation of the liver and pancreas. Within a few months he was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, an autoimmune disease with a grim prognosis. Tools I had used for similar conditions either failed or made him worse. This was after 20 years of full-time work with severe autoimmune disease.

For a year I read everything I could find. After working through the research on autoimmunity I came across a paper on the high concentration of helminths in ancient Nordic and Viking stool. That did not fit the usual story. How could people admired for strength and vitality by both Persians and Romans have been “riddled” with organisms assumed only to drain and deplete?

That question became the work. With a researcher we prepared a first batch of therapeutic helminths. I took them. I felt markedly better. A few months later my son received a dose. Within a few months his laboratory results were normal for the first time in years. They have remained normal since.

How the practice is run

This is not a standard naturopathic clinic. There is a way to practice that stays flexible. Even in natural medicine there are common business habits I will not use, profitable or not. I will not lock tomorrow’s work into today’s package. That means no video “programs,” no prepaid block of required visits, no mandatory test panel for every patient, and no private-label or custom-label medicines that become hard to abandon if they fail.

Practice coaches push those systems because they are efficient. Efficiency is often the wrong goal. Is a friend valuable because the time is efficient? Twelve one-day vacations are not the same as one twelve-day vacation. Streamlining a practice usually means losing information about the person in front of you.

It is easier to discard ten bottles of a product that failed than a hundred bottles of a supplement custom-labeled with your name. Pre-formatted processes move a clinic toward a conventional template and away from the individualization naturopathic doctors used to claim as their distinction.

What works is individualization: understand what a person needs, then deliver it in the safest and most direct way possible. Conventional care is built on averages. Bodies are not. When fighter-pilot seats were first designed from average measurements, not one pilot could reach all the controls. Average medicine often fails the person who is actually sitting in the room. That is why every case is treated as an individual.

Practical terms

Limitation. The practice does not bill insurance. Insurance contracts restrict what can be done and which tools can be used.

What we will do. We accept people we believe we may be able to help, and people we can work with well. The work is aimed at the problem that brought the person in.

Fees. There is no packaged “plan” pricing. An initial visit is charged, then return visits as needed.

Supplements and testing. We do not sell supplements or mark up tests. You are the primary instrument. If outside data is needed, Labcorp is inexpensive and can often be ordered directly. Custom-label bulk supplements are a profit device. They also lock a clinic into inventory. I once discarded six cases after learning a company’s products contained citric acid I did not want. That is easier with six cases than with sixty.

Time. Time spent on one thing cannot be spent on another. The valuable part of the work is sitting with the story of the person and the condition. Thirty years and thousands of cases are the resource. Testing and bottles are not.

A note on expectations

There are no guarantees. What we can offer is a different approach when pharmaceuticals or surgery have failed or were never a real option. The practice is individualized, focused, and careful. At its best it is effective.

I take cases that have already failed conventional routes, or cases given no useful conventional option. If I accept a case it is because I believe there is a chance of real change and I am prepared to give the work full attention. If I do not see that chance, I do not take the case.