Dr Stancic is triple board certified: Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Lifestyle Medicine.

When Dr Stancic was a third year medical student, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a serious autoimmune disease — she had multiple lesions in her brain and her spinal cord. She was soon on multiple medications to slow down the progression of disease. In the talk, Dr Stancic describes her continuing struggles in detail.

Many years later, as head of infectious diseases department in her hospital, she chanced upon a medical journal whose cover page mentioned 'multiple sclerosis and blueberries'! That specific research paper was poor quality but it made Dr Stancic wonder, "is there a relationship between food and disease?" In the talk, she mentions that at this point, she had spent 4 years in medical school, another 4 years as an internal medicine resident and another 2 years as an infectious disease fellow! Dr Stancic says that in all these years, she could not remember a single time that an educator or a mentor connected the dots between food and disease.

Dr Stancic started digging into medical literature that connects food and disease (she started with connections between food and Multiple Sclerosis and quickly chanced upon Dr Swank's seminal work from 1950s. He recommended a plant-based diet (but not exactly the Whole Food Plant-Based diet that the WFPB community advocates today). He actually followed patients for over 50 years (!) and published papers from 1950s to 1990s.

Quickly, Dr Stancic's research pointed her to a Whole Food Plant-Based Diet! She switched and found relief.

Dr Stancic's personal experience influenced her so deeply that she did a career switch! She left infectious diseases and became a lifestyle medicine doctor. In her talk, she mentions that her colleagues (medical doctors themselves) started attending her programs and found relief.

Book: What's Missing from Medicine (224 pages, 2021)

Documentary: Code Blue (97 mins, 2020). Code Blue (website.

Website: DrStancic

Research Paper (Personal Story): From Infectious Diseases to Lifestyle Medicine: My Personal Journey by Saray Stancic, Am J Lifestyle Med 2018 Sep-Oct; 12(5): 428-431.

Podcasts & Interviews: Dr Stancic appears in many: