About
Welcome back!
Sick and Happy is a blog (weblog) for people with chronic illness who are interested in optimizing their wellness and happiness.
Here you will find:
- A collection of articles focused on fitness and wellness written by a physician-turned-wellness coach who understands chronic disease from both a professional and personal vantage point.
- Audio podcast recordings with experts in specific disease states, as well as people who are passionate about improving fitness, nutrition and positive emotion in the lives of others.
- New content added regularly including instructional exercise articles, product and book reviews, articles mining the popular new field of positive psychology to increase happiness, musings about exciting research in cystic fibrosis and other chronic illnesses, and much more.
Who is Julie Desch?
The content appearing on Sick and Happy is produced by Dr. Julie Desch, a 47-year-old retired pathologist with cystic fibrosis. Julie’s professional career began at Stanford Medical School, where she spent 10 years in medical training. While at Stanford, Julie also worked in the Stanford Cystic Fibrosis Research Laboratory, trying to better understand the disease that seemed to dominate her life. She emerged from the “Farm” as a specialist in surgical pathology with sub-specialty Board certification in Dermatopathology.
When the need for more intensive self-care necessitated retirement five years later, Julie expanded her interest in “complementary medicine” by learning all she could about fitness and holistic wellness, becoming certified as a personal trainer, and eventually licensed and certified as a “wellness coach.” With her mission to coach wellness to those with chronic illness, Julie founded New Day Wellness, a non-profit corporation. She now coaches and writes for several publications.
For a rather detail autobiographical story, click here.
