Hello... Again. A Reintroduction
It's been a while.
If you go digging, you might find an old blog post or two of mine buried somewhere on the internet — remnants of a habit I picked up more than once and never quite kept. So before I get into anything else, I figure I owe you a proper reintroduction.
Who I Am (For Those Just Joining)
I'm Dr. Beau Ellenbecker, a family physician who has spent the last fifteen years caring for patients here in North Texas. While I was born in Wisconsin, we moved to Bedford when I was six years old and Texas has been home ever since. I graduated from Euless Trinity High School, studied Movement Science at TCU, and eventually earned my Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree from Des Moines University in Iowa.
From there, the Army took over the plan for a while. An HPSP scholarship led me to a Family Medicine residency at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, then to Wiesbaden, Germany, and eventually a deployment to Afghanistan. Shortly after we left the military and my wife and I came home to Roanoke to raise our family and build my career — which is where I founded a family medicine practice and spent the next fifteen years as its lead physician.
Somewhere in there, I also became a father, a decent home cook with occasional flashes of excellence, an inconsistent reader, a much-too-invested football and hockey fan, and — for a stretch of time — a blogger.
Why I Stopped Writing (Twice)
I actually enjoyed blogging, back when I first tried it. There was something satisfying about putting thoughts into words — it forced me to think more clearly about what I actually believed, and it gave me a way to pass along things I was learning to more people than I could ever get to in a room at one time. But life has a way of filling up the space you give it. As the practice grew busier and my kids grew bigger, the writing was the first thing to go.
I picked the pen back up during COVID, when — like a lot of people — I suddenly had time I didn't know what to do with. That lasted for a while too, until life caught back up with me again, as it tends to do.
What Brought Me Back
Recently, I started following a couple of bloggers I actually know from way back — people I grew up with, in a couple of cases. One of them, it turns out, is a doctor too — a cardiologist, actually — something I genuinely had no idea about until I stumbled onto his writing. Watching people I know put real thought and care into what they share online reminded me how much I missed doing the same thing. So here I am, trying again, this time with the occasional help of my friend Claude.
What This Blog Will Actually Be
My hope is for this space to be a mix of a few things: some straightforward health education, some practical guidelines you can actually use, and honestly, just some observations on the broader world of health and wellness as I see it — plus the occasional recipe or two as well. I also want to use this as a chance to point you toward other writers and voices I think are worth your time — including the ones who inspired me to start this back up in the first place.
To start, I want to take you through what I think of as my guiding principles for wellness — a short list of ideas I've come back to again and again, both in my own life and in the exam room. We'll spend some time on each one individually over the coming weeks, so you get more than just a headline.
After that, I plan to widen the lens. I'll start digging into general health topics, including a lot of the things that seem to be circulating on social media lately — some of it useful, some of it… less so. My goal is to help you sort out which is which.
One Last Thing
If there's a topic you're curious about — something you keep seeing online, something you've always wondered about, or just a question you'd like a straight answer to — feel free to email us. I can't promise I'll get to everything, but I'll genuinely try to work it into a future post.
Thanks for reading. Glad to be back.
— Dr. Beau Ellenbecker
