The Year You Finally Get Healthy: Why Root-Cause Healing Beats Quick Fixes Every Time
In a society, and an industry, that continuously pushes you to do more, buy more, test more, supplement more, it sounds almost wrong to advocate for doing less. But that's often what our clients end up needing the most.
Our practice focuses on lifestyle first: nutrition, stress, sleep, and your daily habits. We spend real time here before moving to testing and supplement protocols. This isn't always a popular approach amongst functional or traditional practitioners, and it sometimes makes clients pause before jumping in and ask “why do you do this if other practices don’t?”
I will tell you: this is a very intentional choice!
After reversing my own autoimmune condition and working with hundreds of women to help them transform their health I've learned something crucial: addressing the foundation doesn't just change your current health. It changes the entire trajectory of your life (and often those around you) for years to come. That’s a bold statement and I stand by it completely. Here me out on this one.
An expensive, thorough testing panel is interesting. You are curious and maybe wonder how you compare to others. Or if there is some quick, easy problem to fix that will change your life in a week. Yes, it will give you data. No, it probably won’t be the magic fix, and it's rarely the best first step.
Today I want to share why there aren’t any quick fixes if you want lasting health, and why a healthy lifestyle can change your life faster than testing can. I’ll talk about what happens when you build the foundation first, and what I've seen change for clients when they finally slow down enough to listen to what their bodies have been trying to say all along.
The January Problem
It's January 1st, and if you're like most high-performing people I work with, you're already feeling the pressure. Time to finally fix everything that's been going wrong with your body because New Year, New Me.
The ads are everywhere. Complete hormone panels. Gut microbiome testing. Genetic testing. Supplement kits. Wearables. Cryotherapy. Sauna. Full body MRIs. And maybe some part of you is thinking, "Yes, this year I'm going to figure this out once and for all."
I get it. I spent most of my life on medication for rheumatoid arthritis, believing that more intervention was always better and that I needed it to be healthy - doubting my body’s ability to create health on its own. More testing meant more answers. More treatments meant more healing.
But what I've learned – both from my own healing journey and from working with hundreds of women – is that sometimes the answer isn't in doing more. It's in finally seeing what's been there all along. And if that sounds impossible or oversimplified to you, stick with me.
Why I Don't Start With Testing
Here's the thing about functional medicine testing: it's fascinating. I'm a doctor, I love data, and there's definitely a time and place for comprehensive panels. And sometimes running just one test is the final key to someone’s healing journey.
But after years of doing this work, I've noticed a pattern. When someone comes to me exhausted, inflamed, dealing with brain fog and gut issues and hormonal swings, and we run alllll the tests, we often find what we already suspected. Cortisol dysregulation. Inflammation markers. Leaky gut. Poor nutrient status. Signs of a body that hasn’t had the inputs that it needs to give the output of good health.
And then what happens? We could add piles of supplements to address what the tests showed. Another routine to manage. More expense. More looking outside yourself for healing. More things to remember when you're already overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, the real issue (the invisible, chronic stress that's been driving everything) is still there. Still running in the background, sabotaging your body's ability to heal.
The testing is useful, but it’s often premature. Because instead of running every test we can think of and handing out supplements, we can start somewhere else. Where the problems actually began!
What I Learned From Reversing My Own Autoimmune Condition
When I started an elimination diet years ago, something unexpected happened. My rheumatoid arthritis symptoms dramatically improved. And that change sent me on a journey to learn more about functional medicine and how powerful it could be.
And while cleaning up my diet was a big part of my healing journey, looking back I realize that my biggest problem was the stress I had no idea I had. The imbalance in my day to day life with running on a hamster wheel and never stopping to catch my breath. Sound familiar?
I found that along with eating better, what I really needed to do was to slow down. To pause.
It might sound crazy now, but during a simple guided breathing exercise at my first functional medicine conference, I slowed down enough to actually feel my body. To notice what was happening. To catch a glimpse of peace, rest and calm that I hadn’t felt in ages! This glimpse allowed me to recognize that I'd been operating in chronic stress mode for so long that I couldn't even see it anymore - it had become my norm.
And that tiny glimpse, that moment of relief, changed everything. Because once you feel what it's like to not be in constant overdrive, you can't unsee it. You start recognizing stress in places you never looked before.
For me, it was realizing how shitty I felt when I shoveled in my lunch while charting and answering messages instead of stopping to eat. Or how I didn’t take a single deep breath all day. Or how much my shoulders, neck, and jaw were clenched even while I slept.
And that recognition allowed me to make some different choices. To pause long enough from the hamster wheel to think intentionally about my day to day life. To start to shift and make tiny changes that over time allowed my body to start to unwind, come down from the stress and heal.
That's what I help women do now. Not through testing. Through actually paying attention. Taking note of the day to day lifestyle choices that are likely sabotaging their goal of health creation.
The Foundation That's Been Missing
Our clients achieve an average 63% reduction in symptoms through lifestyle changes alone – in 3 months time!!!! Not because lifestyle changes are some miracle cure, but because for most people, the foundation has been unstable all along. And that is the first root cause to address.
If your sleep is terrible, your nutrition is inconsistent, and you're running on stress hormones just to get through the day – knowing your exact levels of each vitamin, mineral or hormone isn’t the most important thing right now.
Because even when you jump in and correct deficiencies or take out every food you’re even slightly sensitive to, the underlying root cause of your issues is still there – your imbalanced lifestyle.
This is where health coaching comes in - to guide you in creating that healthy, balanced foundation that allows your body to do what it does best - heal.
What Health Coaching Actually Does
Some people are still surprised by our approach. They wanted the labs. They wanted the data. They wanted something more "scientific," and coaching doesn’t have a clear, consistent protocol. But that’s on purpose. When you work with a coach, they meet you where you are at and create a personalized game plan just for you! No two people’s lives are the same, so your lifestyle shouldn’t be a prescriptive algorithm that is created for the masses.
Here's what I've seen health coaching do that testing never could:
When you feel like you've tried everything and are about to give up, your coach provides a fresh perspective and a personalized plan.
When your progress stalls and you're losing motivation, your coach helps you get curious about the "why" and reignites your commitment. Instead of feeling like you failed, you start seeing the information in the stall itself.
When vacations or holidays are coming up and you're worried about staying on track, your coach helps you create a strategy that allows you to enjoy that experience without sacrificing your goals. It becomes about navigating real life.
When you want to make a big lifestyle change but aren't sure where to start, your coach helps you break it down into manageable, daily habits. The kind that actually stick because they fit into your life as it is, not re-inventing who you are.
When you have a new diagnosis and feel lost and scared, your coach helps you navigate the information and empowers you with a clear, actionable path forward. You're not alone in the overwhelm.
When life gets busy and your health takes a back seat, your coach helps you realign your priorities and build sustainable routines. Not the kind that only works when everything is perfect, but the kind that holds up when life gets messy (because it always does).
When you have an all-or-nothing mentality, your coach will gently guide you to shift your mindset to make incremental, lasting changes. Because the goal isn't to be perfect, t's to keep moving forward.
Through all of this, something deeper happens. You start to recognize patterns you never noticed before. You realize that your afternoon crashes happen on days when you skip lunch and run on coffee. That your joint pain flares after nights of poor sleep. That your gut issues correlate with stress at work, not just the foods you're eating.
You learn to recognize the signals your body has been sending – signals that our society tells you to ignore. Push through. Don’t stop.
And here's the profound part: you start to trust yourself again. To know what you need. To make choices from a place of listening instead of forcing. Of empowerment and control. You’re no longer afraid of every last symptom because you have tools and know how to use them.
That's not something a test can teach you.
The Reality of Real Change
Changing habits, especially when you're already exhausted, is hard work.
Some days, I still wish there was a magic pill that made me productive, calm, energized, sharp, all at the same time!
But that's not how healing works.
Real healing requires you to look at the stress you've been carrying. To acknowledge that maybe the way you've been operating, always pushing, always producing, always saying yes, isn't sustainable. To recognize that your symptoms aren't annoyances to be covered up, they're intelligent signals asking for something different.
And that's uncomfortable. It means setting boundaries. It means putting yourself and your needs on the to do list. It means changing. It means admitting that you can't do it all, even though you've built your entire identity around being someone who can.
This is why health coaching matters, and why I see it as a higher priority than bloodwork or a gut test. Because you need support for this work. You need someone to help you see what you can't see on your own. You need someone to remind you that slowing down doesn't mean falling apart – it’s actually your first step in healing.
What This Means for Your New Year
So here you are, January 1st. Everyone around you is jumping into intensive programs and complete overhauls.
I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I will tell you this: after 20 years in family practice and many more in functional medicine, I've learned that lasting change doesn't come from dramatic New Year's resolutions. It comes from finally addressing what's been missing all along.
If you're tired of the endless loop of the wellness industry, maybe this year is about something different.
Maybe it's about learning to listen to your body instead of trying to override it.
Maybe it's about recognizing that the stress you've been carrying is the iceberg, and you've only been seeing the tip.
Maybe it's about building a foundation that can actually support real healing, instead of constantly patching cracks.
And maybe it’s about doing less!!!!
My Invitation to You
I'm here because functional medicine changed my life, and I genuinely believe it can change yours too.
And here’s something I wish I heard when I was younger: Chronic doesn't have to mean permanent. Your symptoms aren't random. And there's always something that can be done.
Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is pause long enough to actually listen.
Stop starting over. Build real, sustainable health by balancing your life from within - once and for all. This is what our coaches help our clients do, and why we’ve positioned coaching as the first place to start. If you want to get started today, and truly change your health this year, check it out here.