My Story

Hello and thank you for visiting this site!

My name is Joyce Choe and I'm a board certified ophthalmologist living in the Pacific Northwest. It's been a lifelong passion of mine to learn about how diet and lifestyle choices affect chronic disease and how to use safe and natural remedies to further promote healing. This interest grew deeper as it became more personal. In 2011, after years of struggling with chronic weakness, pain, and fatigue, I was told that I had a condition called "leaky gut" and that I had multiple food sensitivities. 

My conventional training caused me to receive my diagnosis with a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt. However, with time, experience, and research, my views changed. I set about to learn as much as I could about how to improve the microbiome and to heal my gut in the most natural and safe way. I now believe that there are many suffering with chronic disease, who have as an underlying issue, the problem of poor gut health. 

In January 2016, I visited a lifestyle center in central California, called Years Restored, founded by Mercy Ballard. There, I was able to close some of the gaps in my understanding of my condition. My autoimmune crisis took years to develop and the road to good health takes time and effort, but the good news is that I no longer struggle with the pain or have the debilitating weakness that I had for much of my 20's and 30's. 

In 2018, Mercy and I started a small group on Facebook, called Plant Based Gut Health. We teach principles for eating that we believe will be the most anti-inflammatory and most likely to heal the gut. We share practical information, recipes, demonstrations, and tips. Members in the group range from those who are simply looking for more information on health to those who are critically ill. Some have attended the program at Years Restored and continue to need information and encouragement to continue their healing journey.

Most recently, Mercy and I published The Autoimmune Plant Based Cookbook. The recipes in this book are based on those served at the Years Restored Lifestyle Center and through this and other educational platforms, we hope to educate and to raise awareness about leaky gut, food sensitivities, and autoimmune disease. We hope to help both patients and health care providers who believe in healing using a creation-based paradigm.