About this episode

Dr. Kendale Ritchey shares his journey of overcoming a 30-year mystery illness through a plant-based lifestyle and discusses the impact of diabetes on foot health.

Dr. Kendale Ritchey is a podiatrist in Knoxville, Tennessee, a former University of Tennessee swimmer, and a self-described “recovered barbecue-aholic.” For nearly three decades, Kendale lived with recurring episodes of intense abdominal, chest, and joint pain, along with fevers and debilitating inflammation. Then, after watching Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead and Forks Over Knives with his wife Connie, Kendale decided to try a whole food, plant-based lifestyle. Within weeks, he noticed something extraordinary: the episodes were milder. Then they stopped. In this conversation, Rip and Kendale talk about his years of unexplained pain, his eventual discovery of Familial Mediterranean Fever through genetic testing, and why a plant-based lifestyle became the turning point in his health. They also discuss Kendale’s work as a podiatrist and the devastating toll of type 2 diabetes on the feet, including neuropathy, poor circulation, infections, and preventable amputations. You’ll hear: Kendale’s background as a swimmer at the University of Tennessee The construction accident that may have triggered decades of inflammatory episodes What Familial Mediterranean Fever is and how he eventually…

Topics covered

• plant-based lifestyle
• health transformation
• diabetes effects
• podiatry
• chronic illness
• weight loss
• inflammation

Keywords

• podiatrist
• plant-based diet
• chronic pain
• diabetes
• inflammation
• weight loss
• health transformation

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