The Autoimmune Recovery Program was born out of the Med Missionary ministry that was started by Dr. Joyce Choe and Mercy Ballard. Both of them experienced significant health issues that caused them to research for possible causes and solutions. In 2019 they coauthored The Autoimmune Plant Based Cookbook due to the great need of practical plant based dietary education. In 2020, when the pandemic started, they began training fellow Christians to recover their health for the purpose of learning how to help others in health crises with the Med Missionary online course.
In 2024, Dr. Joyce Choe and Mercy Ballard wanted to bring members of the community into a friendly spiritual setting where they could experience physical, mental, and spiritual healing using a combination of healing foods, lifestyle changes, the latest nutritional science, and a strong Biblical foundation. This led to the creation of The Autoimmune Recovery Program.
Dr. Joyce is an ophthalmologist who works in the Pacific Northwest. She developed significant health issues after being prescribed a powerful fluoroquinolone antibiotic in the late 1990’s.
Dr. Joyce experienced first-hand how difficult it is to find an answer to the difficult problems that medications can cause and the amazing power of simple changes in diet and lifestyle in transforming one’s life.
She found that despite the breadth of scientific literature on subjects of diet and lifestyle, one needed to have a solid paradigm in which to interpret the literature.
Through the paradigm of her background as a Seventh day Adventist (pioneers in the health and wellness movement) she brings a Bible-based approach to the practical science of healing.
Learn more about Dr. Joyce at:
drjoycechoe.com
Mercy is the founder of Years Restored. Mercy went to medical school in Mexico and has worked as an IV infusion nurse in the US for over two decades. When Mercy developed unusual symptoms of celiac disease in 2004, she had to embark on her own search for answers.
A Seventh day Adventist Christian, Mercy believed that the best diet would be an anti-inflammatory whole food plant based diet as recommended in the Bible.
However, she was confused by the recommendations of health care practitioners to adopt a paleo lifestyle. She set about to discover what was causing so many on plant based diets to continue to have chronic leaky gut issues.
Finding significant improvement for herself, she and her husband opened the Years Restored lifestyle center, and since 2013 the plant based protocol and menus used at Years Restored have helped hundreds of clients find remission and healing.
Learn more about Mercy Ballard at:
yearsrestored.com
