Hi, I’m Dr. Melinda Ring.
Early in my career, a woman in her late forties sat across from me and cried. Not because something was wrong on her labs. Because nothing was. Every test normal, every specialist reassuring, and yet she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think, couldn’t recognize her own body. She’d been told she was “healthy” … but then why didn’t she feel better? The truth is that the medical system simply hadn’t been built to see her. I’ve spent my career fixing that: at Northwestern, where I direct the Osher Center for Integrative Health and train the next generation of physicians, and here, where I translate the science your doctor didn’t have time to explain. You’re not imagining it. And you have more options than you’ve been told.
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National Geographic
“Women deserve better than wellness noise on one side and dismissal on the other. There’s a third path: rigorous science, translated honestly, applied to your actual life. That’s the medicine I practice and teach.”
I’m a board-certified internal medicine, integrative medicine, and lifestyle medicine physician and a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner, and I direct the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University, where I hold the Tina Trott Professorship in Integrative Health.
I trained at the University of Chicago and completed my fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona with Dr. Andrew Weil. I’ve been in practice for nearly three decades, and for almost twenty of those years, women’s health has been my focus. My real education has come from the women who sat across from me doing everything ‘right’ — and still feeling unheard.
At Northwestern I care for patients, lead research, and direct the fellowship and education programs that train physicians in integrative medicine. I also teach culinary medicine, because I believe food is one of the most underused tools in a doctor’s bag. My first book, The Natural Menopause Solution, started my mission to bring evidence-based women’s health to the public. My next book, Meno-Laws (coming in 2027), continues it.
Everything I do comes back to one idea: you shouldn’t need a medical degree to understand your own body. That’s my job. I read the studies so you don’t have to, and I’ll always tell you what the evidence actually says, including when it’s mixed or the answer is no, or not yet.
Where you’ll find me
Clinical Care
I see patients at the Northwestern Medicine Osher Center for Integrative Health in Chicago, where our team combines conventional medicine with evidence-based integrative approaches: hormone therapy, nutrition, botanicals, mind-body medicine, and more. My clinical focus is midlife women’s health, menopause, hormones, and thyroid. New patient visits with me require a physician referral, and telemedicine is available only for patients located in Illinois or Florida. If my schedule is full, I wholeheartedly recommend my Osher Center colleagues — our integrative physicians and practitioners are exceptionally skilled and compassionate.
Osher Center for Integrative Health →Speaking
From global stages to grand rounds, I speak on menopause, hormones, integrative women’s health, and the future of whole-person medicine — for public audiences, health systems, and clinicians.
Explore keynote topics & check availability →Teaching & Training
I direct the Osher Collaborative faculty fellowships in integrative medicine and oversee integrative and culinary medicine education for medical trainees at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. If you’re a clinician who wants to practice this kind of medicine, this is where it’s taught.
Integrative medicine education →The Podcast
On Next Level Health, I sit down with leading voices in integrative, functional, and lifestyle medicine to dig into what the research actually shows, from nutrition and hormones to mind-body therapies. Produced with the Osher Center at Northwestern, it’s where I go deeper than a reel ever can. New episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Apple · Spotify · YouTube →Media Inquiries
For interviews, podcast invitations, speaking requests, and press related to my books and content: [email protected]
For inquiries related to the Osher Center for Integrative Health or Northwestern Medicine, please contact the Northwestern Medicine media relations team.
Where I serve
Osher Center for Integrative Health, Northwestern
Executive Director since 2007. One of 11 Osher Centers worldwide advancing integrative health through research, education, and clinical care.
Feinberg School of Medicine
Clinical Professor of Medicine and Medical Social Sciences; inaugural Tina Trott Professor of Integrative Health.
American Board of Integrative Medicine
Past chair of the board.
Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health
Institutional representative; founder of the Melinda Ring Future Leaders Fund.
Duke Leadership Program in Whole Health & Well-Being
Core faculty.
The Midlife Prescription
The science your doctor didn’t have time to explain — hormones, nutrition, sleep, and the evidence behind it all, written for real life. Subscribe free and get [stress guide name], my guide to what midlife stress is actually doing to your body and what the evidence says helps.
Subscribe free →Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Disclosures
Transparency matters to me, especially in a space where financial relationships often go unmentioned. I do not accept payment from supplement or pharmaceutical companies for the content I create.
No company pays me to say anything. I don’t do sponsored content, and no one buys a mention in my writing or my videos. Where I have a financial relationship with a company — including advisory roles and equity — you’ll find it listed below, and I’ll flag it anytime I discuss that company’s products.
Advisory roles: [to be finalized by Melinda before publishing]
