Reversing Chronic Disease through Functional Medicine: Acknowledging Privilege and Seeking Justice

This piece is based on twenty-eight months of digital-auto-ethnographic research. While my research methods included traditional ethnographic research in face-to-face settings and digital ethnography, my personal experience is also embedded in the work. In this piece, you will find “interludes” that provide glimpses into my healing journey. When writing in this autoethnographic register, I provide “thick descriptions” (Geertz 3) of how I experienced illness and recovery. By including my own story, I am acknowledging that the observed and the observer are inextricably intertwined. All ethnography is relational. Ethnographic data results from a trusting relationship between ethnographer and participant. Furthermore, in autoethnography, the researcher turns the ethnographic lens upon themselves. I expand the potential purposes for conducting ethnography to include personal healing and recovery. These “interludes” demonstrate what is at stake for patients of functional medicine; add (auto)ethnographic texture; and preface my arguments about nested ecologies, the social microbiome, privilege, and health and food justice.