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SerenityNP Integrative Health

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United States
Crystal Lake, IL
SerenityNP Integrative Health

Promoting Women’s Health through Functional Medicine.

Carolyn Johnson, WHNP-BC
🌱 Restoring vitality with a holistic, integrative approach! 👩‍⚕️

Services:
Functional Medicine
Bioidentical Hormone Replenishment
Women's Wellness
Preventative/Wellness Care

SerenityNP.com | 815-604-6075 Call or Text Combining traditional and functional medicine to help you experience healing and lasting joy in your health.

02/02/2026

If you’ve ever been told your heart symptoms are “just anxiety,” you’re not alone.

We see women every week dealing with:
💔racing heart
💔pounding chest
💔breathlessness
💔lightheadedness
💔unexplained fatigue

…and being sent home without answers.

What often gets missed?

💔Hormones.
💔Blood sugar.
💔Cortisol.
💔Inflammation.
💔Perimenopause and PCOS patterns.

Your heart doesn’t function in isolation.
It responds to stress hormones, estrogen levels, insulin, and nutrient status.

We desperately want women to know:
it’s not weak to question vague answers.
and it’s not normal to feel dismissed.

You deserve to have someone investigate the root causes behind heart-related symptoms and build care plans that actually support your whole system.

Message us if you’re tired of guessing, we’re here for you❤️

01/30/2026

Feel like your belly appeared and changed out of nowhere? Even though you’re doing everything right? This could be why, and here are three tips that can help.
If you still feel like nothing is working, it’s probably time to get your hormones checked.

01/28/2026

Once you start supporting your nervous system, your thyroid, and your hormones, your whole body begins to shift out of survival mode.

A few things that can help lower cortisol and support your hormone balance
💊Magnesium for the nervous system
💊Glycine for deeper, restorative sleep
💊Taurine for calming GABA support
💊Enough protein + minerals throughout the day
💊Carbs every meal to keep stress hormones steady

You’ll know your cortisol is improving when…:
✅You fall asleep faster
✅You stay asleep
✅Morning energy feels steadier
✅Your workouts feel better
✅Mood and libido return
✅You feel more like yourself
Your body wants to heal! It just needs the right signals.
If you’re ready to finally understand what’s driving your symptoms and get a hormone plan built around you, message us to schedule a consultation.

01/26/2026

Here’s something most women have never been told:
Before menopause, your body makes THREE TIMES more testosterone than estrogen.
Yet almost every conversation, appointment, and treatment plan focuses only on estrogen and progesterone… while testosterone rarely even gets mentioned.

And here’s why that matters:
Testosterone is a female hormone too.
It supports:
🌸energy
🌸libido
🌸mood stability
🌸motivation
🌸muscle tone
🌸 metabolism
🌸clarity and confidence
🌸overall sense of wellbeing

So when testosterone quietly drops (which often happens years before estrogen changes) women start to say things like:

📉“I don’t feel like myself.”
📉“My drive is gone.”
📉“I’m exhausted no matter what I do.”
📉“I can’t focus.”
📉“My mood is all over the place.”
📉“Nothing feels enjoyable anymore.”

Most are told it’s “normal,” “just stress,” or “getting older.”
But it’s often a hormone that no one is checking.

This isn’t an oversight.
It’s a blind spot in women’s healthcare and MILLIONS of women are paying for it with their quality of life.

This is why we look at the full hormone picture, and not just the ones everyone talks about.

You deserve to feel clear, calm, confident, and connected to yourself again🌸
And sometimes, that starts with finally checking the hormone nobody ever told you mattered.

Message us to book a hormone consult, your wellbeing is worth more than guesswork.

01/23/2026

Ladies!! Don’t let testosterone be labeled in your mind as a “man only” hormone. This little hormone is SO vital to our female bodies! Why? Because it does all this:
✨ Boosts energy and motivation
✨ Supports lean muscle and metabolism
✨ Enhances mood, confidence, and drive
✨ Improves libido and sexual satisfaction
✨ Supports bone density and strength
✨ Helps regulate insulin and blood sugar

If you feel like your fire has dimmed, it might not be in your head. It actually might be your hormones.
Message us to learn more!

01/21/2026

Lowering cortisol isn’t about doing more, it’s actually about supporting your nervous system so your hormones can finally breathe again!
A few daily habits that make a real difference:
✅A small carb + protein snack at night (keeps 3 a.m. wakeups away)
✅Magnesium glycinate before bed for deeper sleep
✅4–5 minutes of slow, nasal breathing to drop stress hormones
✅10–20 minutes of sunlight in the morning
✅Dim, warm lighting at night to calm your system
✅Walking after meals to lower cortisol and stabilize blood sugar
You don’t need perfection. You just need consistency.
Once you’re consistent in lowering cortisol, your system responds quickly when it finally feels safe.
If your symptoms have been loud: fatigue, irritability, poor sleep, anxiety, weight changes - it’s worth checking the hormones connected to cortisol: thyroid, testosterone, progesterone, and more.
Your body can rebalance.
If you want support and a personalized plan, message us to book a consult.

01/19/2026

If you’re…
🌿exhausted
🌿irritable
🌿bloated
🌿wired at night
🌿emotional for “no reason”
🌿gaining weight in places you never used to…

you’re not broken.
and you’re not imagining it.
your hormones are talking!

Most women who come to us say the same thing:
🌿“I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”
🌿“I’m doing everything ‘right,’ but my body isn’t responding.”
🌿“My labs keep coming back ‘normal,’ but nothing feels normal.”

We don’t dismiss that; we start there because feeling unlike yourself isn’t a personality flaw, it’s a physiological signal.

Here’s where we begin:
🌿understanding your symptoms (not ignoring them)
🌿checking the hormones that actually affect mood, weight, sleep, cycles, and energy
🌿looking at cortisol, thyroid, testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone as a system
🌿finding what’s imbalanced — not what’s “in range”
🌿building a plan that supports your metabolism, nervous system, and hormones together

You don’t need to push harder.
You don’t need to “just deal with it.”
And you definitely don’t need to live in a body that feels unpredictable or out of control.

You deserve clarity.
You deserve answers.
You deserve to feel like you again! Steady👏 balanced👏 clear👏 confident👏
If you’ve been living in survival mode, it’s time for support that actually listens.

Message us to schedule a consult.
Your hormones matter, and so do you.

01/16/2026

Most women are trying so hard to feel better… but no one ever taught us the basics our bodies actually need to THRIVE.
Here are 5 things most women don’t know they should be doing for their health:

🍃Eating 25–30g of protein at breakfast to stabilize blood sugar and prevent the mid-morning crash. We thrive with protein!
🍃Adding minerals daily (electrolytes, trace minerals, or mineral-rich foods) to support energy, hormones, and hydration. You can get plenty of minerals through eating whole foods.
🍃Getting 10 minutes of morning sunlight to anchor your circadian rhythm and naturally improve cortisol balance. This will also help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up with more energy.
🍃Strength training 2–3x/week to support metabolism, bone density, and mood-regulating hormones. Strength training does SO MANY wonderful things for a woman’s body!
🍃Prioritizing sleep by dimming lights and reducing screens the hour before bed so your body can produce melatonin. Sleep heals. Sleep is vital.

And here’s the part most people skip - getting your hormones checked when things still don’t feel right.
You deserve to feel amazing, don’t settle for less.

01/14/2026

High cortisol and low testosterone often show up long before your labs look “abnormal.”
& for many women, this combo explains the exhaustion, irritability, belly fat, low motivation, and “I just don’t feel like myself” feeling that no one has ever been able to put their finger on.
Here are a few simple places to start:
✅Pair your caffeine with food to avoid cortisol spikes
✅Add easy carbs like fruit, honey, or potatoes to keep blood sugar stable
✅Dim lights at night to support melatonin and lower evening cortisol
✅Avoid late-night scrolling — blue light = cortisol stays high
✅Balance your meals with protein so your energy stays steady
You’re not broken!! Your hormones are responding to stress, under-fueling, light exposure, and exhaustion.
And the good news? Your body is designed to come back into balance when it gets the right support. That’s incredible!
If you’re tired of guessing and you want to understand your hormones: cortisol, thyroid, testosterone, progesterone, estradiol… we’re here to help.
Message us to book a consult and get to the root of what’s actually going on.

01/12/2026

Most people don’t realize this… but a major driver of rising breast cancer rates in younger women is synthetic birth control hormones.
Two leading researchers, breast cancer surgeon Dr. Rebecca Glaser and OBGYN/PhD Dr. Constantine Dimitrakakis, spent years studying hormone patterns in women with and without breast cancer.

⚠️Here’s what they found⚠️
Women with breast cancer consistently had very low testosterone.
This matters because testosterone is breast-protective, it helps regulate normal cell growth through estrogen receptor beta.
When testosterone is low, breast tissue becomes more vulnerable.

⚠️So what lowers testosterone the most?⚠️
Synthetic progestins (the type used in most birth control pills).
They dramatically suppress both total and free testosterone and increase SHBG, which binds up even more T.
This effect is even stronger when synthetic progestins are combined with synthetic estrogens like ethinyl estradiol (as in most oral contraceptives).

⚠️The result?⚠️
A hormone pattern linked with higher breast cancer risk.
Dr. Glaser and Dr. Dimitrakakis then followed over 2,300 women treated with testosterone therapy for up to 15 years, and found a 47% reduction in invasive breast cancer incidence.
Not an increase… a reduction.

🚨If you takeaway one thing:🚨
It’s not “hormones are dangerous.”
It’s the type and the ratio of hormones that matter.
Natural hormones like estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone behave differently from synthetic ones (especially synthetic progestins)

If you're concerned about hormone balance, long-term birth control use, or breast cancer risk, talk to a provider who understands the difference between natural and synthetic hormones, and how to protect breast tissue, not stress it.
🌸Knowledge = prevention🌸

01/10/2026

The best thing you can do for your health? It starts in your brain!

01/08/2026

If these symptoms sound familiar: waking up at 2–4 a.m., feeling wired at night, exhausted during the day, gaining weight in new places, thinning hair, low libido, flat mood… it’s not a personality problem.
It’s physiology.
And it’s fixable.
Here are a few places to start:
✅Eat regular meals (skipping meals spikes cortisol)
✅Add protein + carbs to your breakfast
✅Dim lights in the evening
✅Avoid caffeine on an empty stomach
✅Take a 10-minute walk after meals
✅Prioritize one calming habit at night (reading, stretching, warm shower)
And if you’re still not feeling like yourself:
We test the hormones that actually influence cortisol, thyroid function, sleep, weight, energy, and mood. NOT just the basic labs that come back “normal.”
Your body is not working against you.
It’s communicating.
If you’re ready to feel steady, clear, and in control again, message us to schedule a hormone consult!

Address

102 Minnie Street
Crystal Lake, IL
60014

Opening Hours

Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Friday	9am - 2pm

Website

https://www.serenitynp.com/

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