Have you been told “your thyroid tests came back normal” but you’re still watching your hair fall out, your skin is dry and you’re feeling cold, or waking up at night in pools of sweat?? That was my story. Everything was always “normal”. Can you relate to this? If you have symptoms, like I did, they’re telling you to pay attention to what your body is saying. You’re going to want to read on to understand why you shouldn’t be satisfied with normal. Here’s the not-so-pretty story about my own messy healing journey:
❌Every month with my menstrual cycle, I experienced stabbing pains shooting from my back down my leg…
❌Every month, in the 10 days before my period, my chin acne would erupt…
❌Every month, I’d either dissolve into a puddle of tears or snap at the slightest irritation…
❌Every month, from days 1 – 4 of my period, I’d have a migraine that would flatten me…
❌Every month, my immunity would dip so that I’d pick up a cold or flu that would take me ages to shake or I’d end up on antibiotics…
❌Every month, I felt like my body betrayed me because I could never predict what my stomach would do – constipated or diarrhea…
❌Every month, like clock work, I’d have a yeast overgrowth or UTI in the 7 days before my period…
❌And probably the worst of them all for me, my boobs would feel like you’d smashed them with a baseball bat at the slightest touch…
I’d been told all this is just part of being a woman and is “normal”... but my intuition knew that no one should have to feel this awful all the time!
Most likely up until now, you’ve been working with a traditional healthcare provider, or even a specialist, who consistently runs blood work but can never find anything suspicious, or if they do find something borderline, they’ll advise you to just “watch” certain biomarkers, and come back in 6 months or a year. While blood test results can provide a wealth of information, the key is to assess your results based on “Functional” ranges and not “Clinical ranges”. The main reason for this is that clinical ranges are very broad, determined by averaging sick people’s scores!!
Do you want to be compared to a sick population and then be told you’re “well” just because your results say “normal”? I urge you not to settle for “Everything looks normal”, particularly if you have symptoms like:
- Anxiety
- Bloating
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Irritability
- Joint pains
- Mood swings
- Night sweats
- Reflux
- Poor sleep
- Difficulty losing weight
For a start, TSH is not the only marker that needs to be looked into, although that is all conventional doctors ever look at. If your TSH is coming in at the clinically normal range, but you’ve got symptoms, it’s worth looking deeper, into Reverse T3, Free T4, Thyroid antibodies, and investigate how they’re functioning.
If they’re not doing well, ask “WHY”. The thyroid can be overburdened by toxins, i.e. environmental stressors like mold, or heavy metals – those silver fillings in your teeth are one of the usual suspects. This is why simply going on a medication like levothyroxine is just a band-aid. Because it may regulate TSH artificially but fail to address the other markers, and what may have been driving them to go haywire in the first place. Interesting fact: Many brands of levothyroxine are known to contain traces of gluten, which is highly damaging to thyroid tissue!
In my story, I’d seen Gastro-enterologists, Urologists and Endocrinologists who’d initially dismissed me with: “It’s probably your high-stress job…” and suggested I see a Psychiatrist.
At that moment in time, while my job as the Head of Wellness at a Multi-national Bank, was demanding, I LOVED it. So I found it difficult to swallow that my symptoms were due to psychological stress. I’d also trained as a CBT Hypnotherapist in 2008, and practiced meditation, and breath work daily – which to be honest, was all that was keeping me alive 🧘. PLUS, I’d been trying alternative treatments for about a decade:
❌Acupuncture
❌Chinese herbs
❌Diatomaceous Earth
❌EFT
❌Homeopathy
❌Nutritionists
❌Quantum energy healing
❌Reiki
Still, my health kept declining despite trying various diets, including being vegetarian and eating low fat, because that’s what I thought was healthy… But I kept up with my search for healing until I found a Functional Medicine Practitioner, and FINALLY… everything made sense.
When we ran the Functional Lab Work to examine the HIDDEN stressors (Hormones, Immune System, Digestion, Detoxification, Energy Production and Nervous system) along with some genetic tests, I could clearly see for the first time why I was so unwell. The overgrowth of gut bugs, the parasites, the damage to my gut lining, all impacted my liver, impacting my hormones, and of course my mood…
Now I had concrete information regarding the drivers to my low energy, low mood, anxiety, sleeplessness and IBS. And yes, there was a genetic component to my anxiety, but now that I could see why, we began working on healing the whole body through a customized Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress Management and Selective Supplements (D.R.E.S.S.). rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, supported by months of health coaching.
I know that Functional Medicine is an out-of-pocket expense, as insurance companies are still in the business of sick-care, rather than prevention. But when I consider that without it, I would have continued on the path of suffering, for God knows how long, and seeing different specialists for each issue that arose, it’s an investment that you can’t afford not to make! Because if you were to quantify the lost years from being unwell and on meds (which cost!), or projected into the future how feeling lousy and yo-yoing between different meds, practitioners, or various diets robs you of happiness, that would cost about 10x more than what I’d invested! Plus what I’ve learned has educated me on how to stay healthy for the rest of my life.
It is possible to be happy, clear-headed, at peace, and know exactly what you should and shouldn’t eat, drink, consume, rather than be stuck in that cycle of trial and error. You CAN get your energy back, feel happy in your body, and know exactly how to nourish it with the right foods, the right thoughts, the right sleep, and the right behaviours.
Let’s get you on that path to freedom and peace of mind today!
If you’d like to receive regular emails with information like this, then please subscribe to our weekly newsletter
If you’d like a consultation to finally get to the bottom of your symptoms, then click the button below
