Dr. Aaron Hartman will never forget the first time he saw Anna. She was 12 months old, sitting in a Bumbo chair on a Winnie the Pooh blanket, her tiny body unable to support itself. An eye patch covered her "strong" eye—not because it was injured, but because her brain had suffered such severe birth trauma that it affected her eye function. Her hands were curled tightly to her chest, classic signs of the brain damage she'd endured before birth.

Anna had been exposed to crystal meth throughout pregnancy and suffered a stroke before she was even born. She was functionally blind for the first six months of life, spending those early months in a drug-induced coma. An MRI showed agenesis of the corpus callosum—the part of the brain connecting left and right hemispheres hadn't formed properly.

The diagnosis was cerebral palsy, labeled "incurable."

But Anna had the cutest little smile, and the only word she could say was "hi."

What happened next is detailed in Hartman’s just-released memoir, UnCurable: From Hopeless Diagnosis to Defying All Odds.

Hartman—who is triple board-certified in Family Medicine, Integrative Medicine, and Anti-Aging/Regenerative/Metabolic Medicine—has had a lengthy journey from conventional family physician to functional medicine pioneer. It began when he and his occupational therapist wife, Becky, had a shocking encounter with the healthcare system's limitations. When Anna was 14 months old and still in foster care with the Hartmans, her pediatric gastroenterologist insisted she needed a feeding tube—a hole cut into her stomach to pump in formula—because she was........

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