My passion for functional medicine is personal. When I was 28 years old, I was diagnosed with the autoimmune condition Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. I remember my doctor telling me that I would have to take medicine for the rest of my life until my thyroid “crapped out” and had to be removed — and that there was nothing I could do about it.

I refused to accept that answer. I researched everything I could find, pouring through books and blogs of experts on Hashimoto’s. The more I learned about autoimmune conditions and the best ways to manage (or heal!) them, the more I was drawn to the root cause approach of functional medicine.

Eventually, I connected with a functional medicine doctor in my area who was accepting new patients. I was thrilled to have an ally who could provide me with personalized guidance on how to manage my condition. That is, until I received the long and intimidating list of suggested lifestyle changes. It turned out, figuring out what I needed to change was the easy part — making those changes proved to be the real work.

The changes took time, I could not make them all overnight. But I can tell you that the changes made a huge difference in how I felt and later became evident in my labs. Within a year of changing my diet, my ultrasound showed the disappearance of all thyroid nodules! Staying the course and making additional tweaks along the way, I was able to completely heal my leaky gut.

I became a health coach so that I can support and encourage other women who have thyroid or autoimmune conditions. It is possible to feel so much better, and you have what it takes to get to the other side of this.