Dr. Karen L. Herbst
MD, PHD
Dr. Karen L. Herbst, MD, PhD graduated from the University of Iowa with a PhD in Cell Physiology and went on to complete a Howard Hughes Fellowship with Robert Weiss, PhD and Ray Gesteland, PhD at the University of Utah. She went on to graduate from Rush Medical College and did her residency and chief residency at the University of Washington. Dr. Herbst went on to complete a combined research and clinical fellowship in Endocrinology at the University of Washington and is board-certified in endocrinology. She has held faculty positions at Martin Luther King Drew Medical Center/UCLA, the VA San Diego Health Care System/UCSD, and the University of Arizona. She won the Lifetime Achievement Award from Tucson Business in 2019 and was named one of America’s top physicians.
You may recognize her as the research physician on Mystery Diagnosis, featuring a man with Dercum’s Disease (The Man with 1000 Lumps). She has been working with people with problems with their fat (connective tissue) since 2000. In 2019 Dr. Herbst headed up a NIH-sponsored conference to establish the standard of care for lipedema and in 2020 she presented new ICD-10 codes for lipedema and Dercum’s Disease to the CDC. She continues her passion for helping people with connective tissue disorders as part of Total Lipedema Care.