founderSTORY

Nothing makes you quite as health conscious as the moment you are handed a newborn baby (or in my case two newborn babies) and you realize you are responsible for every aspect of their health, happiness, and survival. When my twins were born in 2004, I ignorantly didn’t know much about what being healthy truly meant, but I did know one thing and that was that I had the most basic instinct to protect these babies with every bit of my being. Unfortunately, not having the understanding then of what fundamental health meant, I had a very long and hard road ahead…but as many people who have endured a personal health journey will tell you, “you just don’t know what you don’t know”.

Like so many growing up, I had been taught simply that being healthy meant eating right, exercising, and going to the doctors for preventative care or if you are sick. So when we started to think about conceiving I asked my doctor if there was anything I needed to do in particular to have a healthy pregnancy. The advice of course was clinically standard and I obliged by taking the prenatal vitamins she recommended. I would later learn through genetic testing and personal genetic research, that taking those prenatal vitamins was one of the worst things I could have possibly done for my own health as well as for the health of my developing babies. “Folic Acid” as so many doctors tout as the most important nutrient needed for a growing fetus is not actually what is needed. It is “folate” that is critical - folic acid is a synthetic version that is severely contraindicated for anyone with my specific gene polymorphisms. Yet my doctor, and many still today, do not know this. For the first time in my life - I suffered from migraines, throughout my pregnancy - not realizing at the time that it was due to the prenatal vitamins recommended by my physician. Regardless, my “healthy life” continued under additional false pretenses such as: while not everything on the grocery store shelves may be great for you, there certainly was never a thought that the products in the stores could potentially harm you or make you sick long term. I assumed that there were obviously rules and regulations surrounding what is being offered to us as safe for consumption right? I’m sure our regulatory agencies protect our health, correct? After many years of research I have sadly learned that this is simply not the case. But at the time, I continued on with life eating healthy and exercising in my ignorance of thinking this was all that health meant. During my first pregnancy, delivery, and the infancy of my newborn twins, there were many damaging experiences that arose due to “protocols” by our healthcare system. So much so that 20/20 tells me I should have filed litigation with the hospital where my twins were born, as the list of malpractice was long. But during those early years - even as I began to suspect that the majority of the protocols in place have nothing to do with either maternal health, nor infant health as they are promoted to do so - those realities took a backseat to my new role of being a mother. They did peak my interest enough though, that I began to research…a lot…and the more I learned, the more my eyes were blown wide open.

Innately, I have always been an extremely hard worker - type A personality - and responsible to a fault, so when my twins were born, it was second nature to run myself into the ground through managing every meticulous detail of their existence. From the day they were born I put my whole heart and soul into trying to make their little lives as perfect as they could be. My attempts at precision were nothing new for me, as the decade prior all of my perfectionistic efforts had gone towards being the best technology consultant, software development and implementation manager I could be, which was a huge asset in my professional career…but turning this detail-orientation towards two little brand new humans, simply could not be sustained without consequence. Nevertheless, I trudged on in pure exhaustion not realizing the impossibilities of perfection…especially when it comes to caring for newborn twins. On top of my somewhat normal mom responsibilities, I was also challenged with some additional emotional and physical demands through health challenges of all my kids. Some lasting months at a time - such as both newborn twins’ reflux, colic, not taking bottles/pacifiers etc, to older children with broken bones from athletic injuries, to back to back acute viral illnesses with excessive panic from DRs for my youngest leading to ambulatory trips and treatments in the hospital, to years of worry and research from 4 years of intestinal bleeding from one of my kids after a round of vaccines. I exhausted myself with research. Up every night trying for endless hours trying to find answers while they slept, and I worried about upcoming procedures, surgeries, symptoms, and mostly enduring major stress about the best decision for their health regarding future vaccinations.

During my second pregnancy in 2008, my instincts that something was not quite right within the leadership of our healthcare and protection agencies were validated when I by chance stumbled upon a book called, “The Toxic Sandbox” by Libby McDonald. With my jaw on the floor throughout each chapter I read in complete disbelief; I would never look at the world in the same way again. I was in disbelief that such damaging products disguised as “food” were allowed to be sold in our country for consumption; disbelief that thousands of chemicals and toxins are allowed in our home products, children’s toys, in our environment; many of which are pushed upon millions of children in our schools everyday, disbelief that there was zero education or warning provided by the agencies who are supposed to be protecting us regarding what they are allowing in our stores and restaurants for purchase. The most damaging of all and the biggest problem that we as a society still face today in regards to our health and resilience is…the poison that our agencies have allowed to be sprayed on our food sources, crops, school and park grounds, and sold as safe in every home improvement store for use in our homes; This abhorrent practice which started in the 1970s and has increased more than 100 fold through 2016 is Monsanto’s “Round Up’ otherwise known as the chemical “glyphosate” - and in the opinion of many experts is the worst devastation to our society’s health in our modern history. The idea that we have a foundation of protection when it comes to health in our country couldn’t be further from the truth. My mind was blown. The details in this book proved my suspicions that we were simply on our own to protect ourselves and our children from everything being offered in our country as “safe”. I completely transformed our household from whole foods and occasional organic, to 100% organic whole foods (to avoid glyphosate), removed all toxic personal care and household items, and all plastics. One thing to know about me is when I choose to do something I GO ALL IN 100%...a blessing for anyone I happen to be working for (at this time it happened to be my children)…but as I would continue to learn it would be one of the largest contributing factors to my personal health decline.

With all of this new found knowledge on the toxins that surround us everyday, I added this information to my priorities as a mother to do the best for my children and THEIR health everyday. I meticulous cared for every detail to the fullest degree ensuring no possible neglect was made. This level of effort continued throughout the time when I had three children under the age of four, burying myself as the “all encompassed parent” armed with what I thought was the only health knowledge I needed - an almost entirely organic diet, avoiding toxins, and regular exercise. My full time job was dedicated and overtaken by making sure the details of each of their three little lives were addressed and that they were the “healthiest” they could be. This intense level of effort may still have been okay had I understood the importance of taking breaks or time off during that time - but unfortunately because I was in a situation where I had zero support system - there were absolutely no breaks, ever. No opportunities for lunches with friends, dinners out with my husband, nor ever, ever any time alone. I worked myself into oblivion for a decade and a half not for once thinking about my needs or that I could potentially be creating negative health consequences for myself; When the twins were babies this meant not sleeping for more than a few minutes a night…for many months, to when they were a year old still getting up 5-6 times a night to feed each one of them as they needed. I never had any help - and so I was never able to take any time to replenish the tank that I was pouring from non-stop. It wasn’t until the twins turned 14 years old that my husband and I were able to take our very first vacation alone! My first break, a few nights without kids for the first time since the twins were born fourteen years prior…that’s a lot of days of work with no time to recover. I had no idea that this altruistic mentality, and the work ethic I portrayed was wreaking such havoc on my health. I had always been tough, the middle child of six daughters and always dubbed the responsible one who could handle anything thrown at me, on my own. Coming from a super chaotic household where there was never time for one on one attention, I always felt like all my responsibilities were up to me alone - my mom in fact had incessantly always said that I had “raised myself” - and this mentality continued on in my adult life. Through my professional career along with when my children arrived, I always handled everything 100% on my own, because I always had and that was my normal. Providing each of my kids with the individual attention that I had always desired as a child yet never received felt completely natural to me. I truly desired an emotional connection with each of them and I made every effort to ensure that our relationships were the best and most fulfilling they could be. I was passionate about each of my children receiving individual time and attention, as I was not offered that as a child, and I was so happy to provide my kids what I did not receive growing up. So they got all of my time, 24/7, because that was the right thing to do in my mind. Feeling invincible and strong through my 20s and most of my 30s I never imagined any potential personal health impacts ever arising as a result. These little beings were all of my responsibility and it was instinct to me to sacrifice everything for them. Day after day, night after night went by with very high stress and very, very, very little sleep, very little outside connection, and zero life balance.

At the ten year mark I became a full time “single parent” as my husband moved to Washington state full time for work while I continued my super mom status as I always had…with zero support system. The impossibility of keeping up with three ultra busy kids with daunting school/activity schedules, driving each of them all over town, even having to regularly get my youngest ready for bed in a restaurant bathroom “putting her to bed” in the car each night while I continued to drive the twins around was non-stop exhausting. During this time my only mental (and physical) outlet was a five day a week boot camp/Cross Fit obsession. I was addicted to how it made me feel, and it was the only thing I had done for myself in over decade. So I thought this “healthy me time” habit was great as I was finally doing something for me. Unfortunately, I had no idea the harm I was causing myself. I worked out hard, most everyday and it felt amazing, but the second I walked out of the gym it was back to my extreme self-sacrificing ways of full time kids first; prioritizing their meals, sleep, health, activities, appointments, school and driving needs all on my own at the expense of anything I might need personally. I fully neglected to factor in any proper recovery for all of the intense activity I was asking my body to accomplish everyday. Little did I know that the strenuous exercise I was putting myself through was causing intense pressure on certain genes to generate epinephrine and other critical neurotransmitters at high levels both as a pre-curser and as a reaction to the exercise, while my circadian rhythm sleeping habits and nutritional habits were not giving these genes the necessary support given the intensity I was maintaining. I was wrecking my nervous system. I also was inadvertently causing fundamental gut and nutritional absorption damage as a result of the excessive years of stress and other seemingly innocent lifestyle habits. While my physiology struggled to keep up with all of these demands, I was about to learn that health is so much more than I ever dreamed it was - it is not just how healthy you eat, how much you exercise, or even freeing your environment of toxins; but again, you just don’t know what you don’t know.

In 2014 my health crashed. My initial symptoms were sudden onset of six pounds of leg swelling that developed after a particularly brutal eccentric hamstring set at bootcamp leaving me mostly numb from the waist down for the next few days. Most people would have rushed to the ER, but since I did not have a support system - no one to hand my kids to so that I could go to the hospital - I continued on with typical mom life, owning up to all of my responsibilities around town with my shocking and grotesquely swollen leg…for a full 10 days. I remember going to my youngest’s kindergarten graduation and having to wear a long dress to hide the unusual swelling…having no choice but to wait until my husband was back in the state the next weekend so I could leave the kids with him to go to the ER alone. I received a Rhabdomyolysis diagnosis during that visit and it was a few weeks after that when my labs showed my kidneys had finally cleared the overload of muscle breakdown that had occurred and had caused the swelling injury to my legs. Instead of feeling relief, however, it was just the beginning of a what would become my health journey. Soon after it was symptom after symptom, doctor after doctor, test after test. These seemingly sudden symptoms included many which have become far too common in our society…especially for those who have encountered chronic challenges…they included, chest pain, blurred vision hormonal imbalances, muscle pain, brain fog, neuropathy, bone pain, tremors, and fatigue. I spent four months rounding Mayo Clinic, seeing every specialist from Neurology, to Rheumatology, to Cardiology, to Infectious Disease, and having every test you could ever imagine in their facilities. The Neurology department gave me a “POTS” (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) diagnoses, the Endocrinology department gave me a “Premature Ovarian Failure” diagnosis, and the Rheumatology department gave me a “hypermobility syndrome” (an EDS derivative) diagnosis – all of which were simply syndromes by definition which ultimately meant nothing more than a label on top of a collection of symptoms. My experience at Mayo Clinic was highly upsetting. It was the realization that traditional western medicine’s goals were certainly not the same as mine. They didn’t care of the “why” for any of my symptoms. Not one specialist ever listened to the string of events that had occurred with the intention to piece together the physiological puzzle. Instead, it was clear that each of them were only interested in determining which ”diagnosis box” I potentially fit into so they could determine which tests to run, and eventually which drugs to prescribe. It became glaringly clear, that these physicians - the best doctors, at the best hospital in the country - were not anatomy experts, but rather were simply surgical and pharmaceutical experts, and that’s all the knowledge they had. Their diagnostic process cared nothing for the root cause of what was happening, and their goal was not to cure me of anything, it was only to label me. Not one visit or test included any analysis of the steps that had occurred or what I had gone through in my past or what my personal anatomy had endured, nor considered the collection of symptoms as they developed, or the possible relation of each one to the other. Isn’t that what Mayo clinic was designed to do? Instead it was all about, which test, positive or negative, pass or fail, to tack on which label, for ultimately which pharmaceutical drug. That was it for them. That was the only service they could provide. But how does being given a label do anything to address and reverse what had happened? Labels don’t solve anything, and neither do pharmaceutical drugs.

I know now that my health decline was not “caused” by my sudden exercise injury or by a suspect viral infection I had around the same time. They may have been the catalysts - but they certainly were not the cause - my symptoms and beginnings of chronic illness instead was the result of years of gene dysregulation as a result of my lifestyle and negative environmental factors. Aberrant gene expression created as a result of my unbalanced, disconnected, and stress-filled life…for decades. But I of course did not know this at the time. It would take me 5 more years of endless research hours, countless doctors, flights, treatments, and literally hundreds of viles of blood for me to use every bit of information I could gather to finally learn this on my own through a very long and difficult journey.

In 2014 I was devastated and confused. How could I go from so normal to so not so quickly? The “sudden onset” of symptoms were so puzzling and I was entrenched with the desire to figure out what had happened. At that point, I had already spent a decade of my life as a researcher, specifically for my kids medical needs. But this was the year though that the research turned towards my needs, and a whole new world of information was revealed. During these new years of research, I was now spending countless hours and endless nights researching and gaining as much biochemistry knowledge as I could. The next five years my full time job (on top of motherhood) became learning how to heal myself. I sought out and visited more than fifty physicians during this time - dozens of local doctors as well as criss-crossing the country in search of a functional medicine specialist who could help explain what had happened to my health. During this process I received a few additional traditional diagnosis, such as “Lupus (SLE)”, and even some more progressive diagnoses of “Lyme disease”, and “MTHFR Homozygous” SNP polymorphisms - again all of which created rabbit holes of research, but in the end none of which were the ultimate progression towards actually healing. Coincidentally I also suffered a few month infection with Valley Fever (a fungal lung infection that is a risk living in the SW desert) early on, which also took a lot of learning and discovery to recover from. All those years, I would get so excited when my research or a referral would lead me to a new “functional medicine specialist” or renowned neurologist, cardiologist or rheumatologist who would be touted as being able to truly help me - each of them charging over a thousand dollars for an initial hour visit (always cash only, as insurance is never accepted amongst these truly specialized “experts”), along with long and many flights and travels to see each one. Each and every time leaving with vast disappointment and a heavy heart with no progress - none of them having the answer of what had happened to me. In fact in every case, I found myself teaching each of them so much about what I had learned through my many years of research; after all, they are all so busy seeing patients all day every day they don’t have the time to attend to and absorb all of the information that exists online in medical journals and studies available for anyone with a desire to learn. They often asked if they could make copies of the charts, graphs, and documents I would present to them. I had spent thousands of hours analyzing pages upon pages and books upon books of biochemistry, nutrition, neurologic, cardiovascular, and endocrinologic studies, and any medical journals I could find, week after week, month after month, year after year. My passion for research taught me so much, and my mind was continually blown with all of the revelations I discovered and learned.

As I met with each of these physicians during this time, I committed myself to every possible “cure” that they recommended or that I learned of personally. I took each diagnosis for face value and dove into both traditional and more holistic treatments for each of them, all which lead me to the same realization that the labels truly didn’t matter. What was becoming certain was while some of these treatments may have helped a little here and there, it became clear that there was an underlying metabolic root cause that had yet to be addressed. Even naturopaths who although they run different tests than traditional doctors, still tend to do the same protocol for every patient who walks through the door. I obliged with them as well, and I tried everything you can imagine as a treatment. I’ve endured dozens of elimination diets, for weeks, months, and years at a time, and in the end they don’t truly “heal” anything either (unless you truly have celiac disease) because if when you add the foods back into your diet and the symptoms still exist, then you haven’t truly healed anything. The good news was that every specialist I saw, every experience I had, and every protocol I put myself through, gave me a little extra bit of knowledge that I have brought with me to this day, as I do believe that when brought together they are each a tiny and important piece of the puzzle to overall healing.

In the middle of these experiences, in 2015 I was chosen to be in a 23 & Me Lupus study, at which time I stumbled into the field of Epigenetics. Based on everything I had learned and been through, it was my eventual realization that I had finally found it. I knew based on all my experiences that my symptoms had stemmed from dysfunction of my genes. My symptoms that “suddenly” appeared in 2014 weren’t so sudden, they were bound to happen based on far too many minutes, hours, days, and years of neglecting what I didn’t know true health is actually comprised of. The “labels” I had been given didn’t matter, they were just labels that didn’t explain what had happened to my systems. Instead, what did explain my progression of symptoms perfectly was the lifestyle choices I had made for decades of my life, and the stress I had put my body through. I learned and knew in my heart as when looking back I had physically felt it on many occasions that those stressors were powerful enough to create change in the way my genes were expressing themselves. It finally made sense. I had found the root cause, and it was the scientific explanation that I had been seeking for so many years. What made this discovery most exciting was the knowledge that my body could heal. The key was simply to find out exactly what my body needed to do so. I just needed a way to somehow evaluate my current deficits and exactly what state my body was in; with this knowledge I could then work to provide my body and each of my cells with precisely the resources they were needed to thrive. Afterall, we are all so unique, with ~25,000 unique genes and SNPs to prove it. How could any one treatment natural or pharmaceutical be relevant and truly good for every single person? How could any one individual or any one particular protocol possibly figure out how to heal each individual system better than each individual system itself? Our job is to simply find out what our bodies’ need and provide exactly the foundation necessary in order to perform at our best.

If I’ve learned anything over my last 20 years of research and experiences, it is this…health is so much more than what many of us have been taught…it is not just what you eat, how much you exercise, and going to the doctor for check-ups. Health is all encompassing. It is every thought, emotion, interaction, moment, and manifestation we have within ourselves every moment of everyday and it is so much more than you could ever imagine. The best news is, that WE as individuals do have control over our personal health, so much more so than we have been taught to believe. We are in so much more control of our own destiny than we had ever imagined ~ we just need to arm ourselves with the proper knowledge ~ our body with the proper resources ~ and our mind with the dedication to get there.