03/04/2026
Dan & I were just talking today about my journey.
Two years ago, I was exhausted.
I couldn’t sleep at night but I was exhausted every day.
I was inflamed. I could see it in my face, but I didn’t actually know how badly inflamed I was until I had my CRP tested.
I had been to a few different OB/gyn docs an had explained to them that I didn’t feel right.
I didn’t feel like myself.
I gained a fair amount of weight, and ended up weighing more than I had when I delivered some of my kids. I was so discouraged by that. 
I was normally pretty optimistic. I had a lot of energy. I could get a lot done in a day. All of that kind of came to a screeching halt in my late 30s.
I was struggling.
I didn’t know why.
I thought it might have something to do with my hormones, but I didn’t really have any proof of that. And when I asked OB/gyn doctors to test my hormones, they all told me the same thing.
“This is just normal”.
Or “This is your new normal”.
Or even “Welcome to your 40’s” as they went on to tell me that weight gain, heavy periods, mood swings, headaches & raging emotions were just a “normal transition” between a woman’s birthing years & menopause.
All three of them suggested surgical intervention (either an ablation or hysterectomy). They encouraged me that if I was no longer using my female organs I might as well just get rid of them because for the most part they just cause trouble.
One of them was supposedly a more natural minded doc that Dr Chartrand had sent me to. Two years in a row, she explained to me how she wanted to reduce her risk of getting breast cancer and other female cancers, so she cut everything out.
I sat there In total disbelief, thinking, “This Is a natural minded ob/gyn”?
I am not one to complain, but Dan saw everything that I was going through firsthand. 
Just tonight- after Dan and I talked about the huge transformation that has occurred in my life over the last two years… I got an email from a company that we love.
The email described everything that I had gone through. Everything that many women go through.
It was a long article, but I asked ChatGPT to summarize it for me…
Chat said, my big take-away is, “Menopause doesn’t just cause weight gain — it changes where fat is stored, increases inflammation, reduces muscle, and raises risk for metabolic and cardiovascular problems”.
Bingo.
100% truth.
Statistics say that the average woman will gain 15 to 20 pounds during perimenopause.
Even women who don’t outwardly gain a lot of weight during perimenopause and menopause gain visceral fat. Fat around their heart and fat around their belly. 
Many of them become significantly more inflamed.
Oxidative stress takes a toll on their bodies.
They start to feel like crap, and as time marches on - they feel worse and worse, and become more hopeless.
That’s where I was two years ago.
I was looking at the statistics.
I had never really been terribly heavy in my whole life - so accepting  the fact that I was carrying around an extra 20 pounds was really rough. The thought of putting on even more weight was inconceivable. 
I decided I wasn’t going to be a statistic.
Sometimes people say things like, “You look good for a mom to eight”. I didn’t want to just look or feel good comparatively speaking ‘as a mom to eight’.
I want to feel good period.
It’s almost like society tells us … “You’ve had kids. It’s OK to carry around extra weight forever. That’s just part of the gig”.
That’s not actually true. The miracle of life that allows us to conceive actually shows how incredibly healthy we are and the great potential of our bodies to do all the right things, if given the right inputs.
Dan and I started researching and reading. We started digging really, really deep into hormones, hormonal imbalances, perimenopause … and what to do to combat it.
Not just how to put a Band-Aid over the symptoms, but how to reverse it.
How to undo it.
How to avoid the effects of it, at all cost. 
I wish I could tell you that there was an inexpensive pill that I woke up every morning and took … and it’s solved all of my problems.
Unfortunately, I can’t.
It took a radical lifestyle change - a really radical lifestyle change.
But - during a time when statistics said that I should gain 15 pounds, I lost 25. 
During a period of life that said my inflammatory markers should go up, they came down drastically. Like really drastically.
During a period of life when many women experience really bad mood swings and irritability, I felt calmer than I ever had been.
During a time that most women cannot sleep statistically, I’ve gotten some of the best sleep I’ve ever had in my life. Deep REM sleep that allows me to wake up at 6:30 in the morning without an alarm clock feeling refreshed.
As a practitioner, Dan has a vested interest in hormones, because of my journey.  Nothing motivates a practitioner to focus on some thing like watching their wife or a child suffer with it. 
I’ve done all the tests. I held off for way longer than I should have, because they’re expensive, but ultimately ended up doing the Dutch test. And then a Genova test. And then a G.I. mapping test.
Dan text my thyroid pretty regularly. We don’t get labs done for free. It’s an investment. But to me, it’s totally been worth it. I have been told for years that my thyroid numbers were normal as I gained weight, I had no energy, and my hair fall out.
I switched from levothyroxine to armor thyroid and began looking at “optimal” thyroid numbers versus normal thyroid numbers.
Thru testing, I also discovered that I have a COMT genetic mutation, which directly affects your hormones and is pretty common in women. Knowing that I had it helped us to know how to treat it.
Three years of suffering silently, almost completely hopeless that anything was ever going to get any better.
And then two years of digging deep, researching, reading, and trial and error …
Transitioning and changing my diet to nutrient rich foods that nourish my body.
Diving into gut health and liver detoxification.
Exercising, resetting my circadian rhythm, and looking at my cortisol levels and adrenals while tweaking my thyroid.
Progesterone has absolutely been my best friend through the whole process. Gosh, do I wish that someone had introduced me to buy a identical progesterone four years ago. It would’ve saved me so much pain and hardship.
All of that to say … it’s been a wild ride these last five years.
I hope that if there is someone out there like me - where I was for five years ago getting no answers. On the brink of utter hopelessness. I pray that if you read my story, it gives you hope.
Many of us are beginning to wake up to the reality that it doesn’t have to be this way.
That we can take our health into our own hands and change the trajectory of our future for the better.
I hope and pray that more doctors begin to dive into functional health. Functional hormones. Functional labs and markers that address root causes and healing versus Band-Aids that mask symptoms. Optimal labs versus normal labs.

When Dr Dan was in surgery and was so heavily intertwined into the hospital systems, he always used to advise our kids not to go into medicine.
Now that the Lord has put us where we are today, we hope and pray that some of our kids will have an interest in following In Dan’s footsteps. And that many others will do the same.
There is no better time to take back your health than today.
One step at a time.
One change at a time. 
Every single step and every single day will bring you closer to feeling like yourself again. 
And that is a beautiful thing ❤️
