About Dr. Rismyhr

He left the system.
So his patients could too.

Dr. Charles Rismyhr, MD with a patient at AlereMD

The Beginning

Singapore. China. Panama. Brooklyn.

Charles Rismyhr didn't grow up in one place. His father shipped cargo around the world, and Charles shipped with him — Singapore, China, Panama, the United States. He was the kid who spoke three languages before he finished high school, the one who could navigate a night market in Mandarin and a finca in Spanish.

His grandfather was a physician and a cattle rancher in Panama. Not one or the other — both. He delivered babies in the morning and checked fence lines in the afternoon. From him, Dr. Rismyhr learned something that medical school rarely teaches: the land you eat from shapes the body you live in.

That idea stuck. It became the thread that would run through everything — his training, his practice, his philosophy, the yogurt he ferments on his kitchen counter.

The Training

Caribbean. England. Brooklyn.

He studied medicine in the Caribbean and in England. He did his residency in Brooklyn — the kind of training where you learn to treat everything that walks through the door, because everything walks through the door.

He came to Houston in 2022. Board-certified in family medicine. Fluent in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. He joined the system. He believed in the system.

The system didn't believe in him back.

The Turning Point

“I nearly walked away from medicine entirely.”

Insurance rules. Loss of autonomy. Pressure to see more patients in less time. At Houston Methodist, Dr. Rismyhr was doing what the system asked — seeing 25 patients a day, spending 7 minutes with each, filling out forms that had nothing to do with healing.

His patients were underserved. He was burned out. He started to wonder if he'd chosen the wrong career.

But quitting medicine wasn't the answer. The problem wasn't medicine — it was the business model wrapped around it. So he built a different one.

What He Built Instead

AlereMD

Alere: Latin for “to nourish, support and sustain.”

AlereMD is Direct Primary Care. No insurance billing. No corporate oversight. No pressure to see 30 people a day. Just a flat monthly membership and a doctor who actually has time for you.

Dr. Rismyhr limits his practice to 400 patients. In a traditional practice, that number would be 2,000 or more. The difference is everything. It means he actually knows you. It means when you call, he answers. It means your appointment is an hour, not seven minutes.

It means he can practice medicine the way his grandfather did — with time, attention, and the understanding that health starts long before you walk into a clinic.

Off The Clock

The sourdough. The yogurt. The sunrise runs.

Dr. Rismyhr lives in Houston Heights with his wife and daughter. He bakes sourdough every week — not as a hobby, but because he believes you should know what's in your bread. He makes his own yogurt. He runs the neighborhood streets at sunrise.

He credits “The Omnivore's Dilemma” by Michael Pollan as foundational to how he practices medicine. He keeps grissini in the office for patients. He hosts farmer's market walks where he talks about the health benefits of food you can trace back to the soil it grew in.

His philosophy is FERF: First Eat Real Food. Not supplements. Not fad diets. Real food — whole ingredients, locally sourced when possible, prepared with intention.

“Primero come comida real.” — First Eat Real Food