Functional Midwifery: Holistic Gynecology and Women's Health

10/12/2025

Can we please normalize spending money on birth?? it baffles me to see a woman spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a nursery, and tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding (even $80 on yoga pants…), but not want to spend a dime to improve her Birth experience which will literally impact her for the rest of her life, physically, mentally, emotionally, as well as her child

10/07/2025

You know, just because you only have to go to the gyno every one to five years doesn’t mean it has to suck 😉 You could have a beautiful, empowered, informative, and even fun 🤩 experience with your well woman care. I’m here to provide it, at beautiful

10/05/2025

Love this

In Vietnam, this image of a grandmother breastfeeding her grandchild is more than extraordinary, it’s part of a long history of shared nourishment.

Across cultures and centuries, communities have practiced cross-nursing and wet-nursing:
✨ In times when a mother was ill, passed away, or simply needed support, another woman, sometimes even a grandmother, stepped in to feed the baby.
✨ In Vietnam and other parts of Asia, women have been known to relactate, meaning they can restart or continue milk production, even later in life, when there is a baby in need.
✨ In Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Indigenous communities worldwide, shared nursing was seen as a form of survival, kinship, and solidarity.

Breastfeeding has never been just one mother and one child.

It has often been a communal act of love, protection, and survival.

This photo reminds us that human milk is not only food, it’s medicine, comfort, and a living connection that binds families and generations together.

-Love,
Badassmotherbirther

10/02/2025

Hi 🙋‍♀️ I’m Rachel Olsson, CNM, APRN – your Integrative Gynecologist. I provide holistic gynecology and full-spectrum women’s health care for women of all ages: from teens through menopause and beyond.

My goal is to make healthcare compassionate, informed, and enjoyable. I specialize in functional medicine and going many layers deeper into your health than traditional (insurance based) practitioners have the time, the willingness, and the training to go.
My favorite clients are those who are already super dialed in and health conscious and who just are Not getting what they feel they deserve from the healthcare system.

I commonly work with women struggling with:
- Fertility
- PCOS
- Perimenopause and Postmenopause
- And those simply wanting Way Better GYN care for their ongoing health journey

Come check me out beautiful where you can have a superfood latte and get a massage or acupuncture or take a yoga class or sit in the sauna or salt cave (etc,etc!) before/after your visit. (As opposed to sitting in a gross fluorescently-lit waiting room and kind of hating your life for a couple hours while you check off an annual box 😜)

09/13/2025

I’m just curious, does anybody else send messages like this to their gyno or Womens Health provider? I feel really lucky to be able to help women in the way that I do. It’s not easy at all to step outside the box and provide something entirely different than what is offered with insurance based care, but I feel really proud that my relationships with clients are like this: full of gratitude and hearts and namaste 🥰

09/04/2025

Just saying, you could have a much more beautiful, cozy, informed and all around enjoyable experience (with me)! means with woman and care for women throughout their whole lives, from teens through menopause and beyond. And you can expect to get a lot higher quality of care with a Midwife vs an Obgyn. That’s not to say I don’t refer out occasionally for certain issues, but for the vast majority of women, your needs are going to be way better served by breaking up with your OBGYN 🤭

Your most precious parts deserve better

08/19/2025

literally means “with woman” and so I feel like I’m always a Midwife even though I’ve gotten away from birth work specifically in my career (rather focusing on the GYN and women’s health realm)… but that said, I was open to moonlighting in the birth world, and so I’m delighted to share that I’m officially now Also filling in shifts at Colorado Birth and Wellness Center as a Certified Nurse Midwife, which realIy fills my cup for having midwife buddies and getting to be witness to the glory of 🥰

08/18/2025

More nuance and spicy tidbits below ⬇️

It’s true: there is No test for men to detect the strain of HPV that causes cervical cancer in women
Even ge***al warts, which are HPV but a Different strain, are diagnosed simply by visual examination by a medics professional 😔

❓ “Besides condoms, how can I lower risk?”
👉 Condoms reduce risk but don’t fully prevent HPV (nor HSV aka herpes) because lesions commonly occur where the condom doesn’t cover
👉 So ask about HPV (and herpes) history or testing.
👉 Focus on immune health = your best protection.
👁️ Note: I didn’t say anything about getting a certain “preventive” injection as a teen, did I? My clients who have had the worst cervical dysplasia have almost always had the 💉 and despite what many doctors say, once you have HPV, getting that injection, can’t protect you: you already have HPV and your body will always have it. Additionally there are literally over 200 types of HPV and the shot only protects against 9 strains.

⸻

Does HPV Clear?
Kind of
👉 Most people encounter HPV at some point.
👉 Often, the immune system clears it naturally without being colonized or keeps it dormant. When it doesn’t, it can show up as ge***al warts or cervical dysplasia (different strains), but just like any virus, your body Can keep it at a healthy and even undetectable level

⸻

If you already have HPV:
✨ You don’t need to fear “getting it again.”
✨ The focus is keeping your body strong → the virus stays quiet.
Do the things you know to do to protect yourself from anything: get enough sleep, sunshine, and nutrition, and manage stress

You got this 💫



Come see me in Denver or online! Website in bio

07/20/2025

🧬 Early Breast Cancer Screening—Through Tears?!

Yes, really. Auria is a revolutionary, non-invasive breast health test that analyzes your tear drops to screen for protein biomarkers associated with breast abnormalities.

No radiation. No compression. No appointment needed.

✨ Uses just a few drops of your tears
✨ Detects signs of abnormal breast activity, even before a lump appears
✨ Safe, private, and can be done at home
✨ Ideal for women wanting a proactive approach to breast health that is noninvasive

At Functional Midwifery, I am excited and proud to offer this innovative test as part of a holistic approach to women’s health and cancer screening. But the best news is that it’s direct to consumer and so you can order it on your own and do it at home! See link in bio and use code MIDWIFERY20 for $20 off 🙌

Please note this is a Screening not Diagnostic test with a moderately high false positive rate which means if you get a negative: GREAT, you are in a very healthy breast camp. If you get a positive, no need to freak out! You are likely still healthy, however the next logical step will be a clinical breast exam and perhaps imaging.

🌀 Functional Midwifery Holistic GYN + Full-Spectrum Women’s Health

07/12/2025

🎤 …Vasectomy! OK obviously this isn’t a fit for everybody and there are a lot of urologists out there who won’t do it until a guy is 30 or meets their criteria for when they think it’s ethical (that happens with tubal ligation too), but as a product of a dad who had a vasectomy reversed to have me, and myself: a mom of a toddler born out of a vasectomy reversal, I’m living proof that vasectomy reversal is possible (not guaranteed, but fertility never is), and I have to say that the stress of not getting pregnant after baring the brunt of “birth control” from my teens into my 30s and then of course baring the babies, I feel so strongly that more men need to just have the tiny ✂️ that literally just gives them the free pass to catch up on Netflix and NBA (or whatever they are into) for a couple of days while they ice their balls… (we need not mention the months and Years of discomfort women endure between their bleed times to pregnancy to childbirth and the postpartum time).
It’s also Cheap.
It’s highly effective.
And No hormones are affected, and therefore no full body endocrine disruption occurs.
Oh, and I’m glad you asked: increased risk of prostrate cancer? MYTH! That was a poorly done study from the 90s. A large 2017 meta-analysis in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found no significant association between vasectomy and high-grade, advanced, or fatal prostate cancer. (In reality it was just that men who had vasectomies were more likely to have more medical testing done and so a skewed rate of prostrate cancer was shown to occur in those guys who sought more medical care).

Alright men, make me proud! Let’s see how much you care about your ladies!

07/01/2025

This summer, moving to I’m particularly interested in how to protect my skin from the sun without actually wearing toxic sunscreen 🤔 I don’t even like wearing the mineral stuff if I can get away with it, because a) my skin always breaks out and b) I truly value the benefit of the sun on my skin….and yet being fair skinned, I do need to do something once I hit altitude beyond my typical routine of a large sun hat and spending time in the shade. And so I’m personally experimenting with which helps preserve collagen and elastin, which are broken down by sun exposure And it increases the threshold at which one typically burns. It also inhibits oxidative stress and inflammation (far better than vitamin C).

Typical dose is 4–12 mg/day orally for skin benefits (from natural sources like Haematococcus pluvialis algae). I’m personally just trialing 6mg daily.

How soon do you need to take it you might ask?
In the First 1–2 weeks: Cellular antioxidant activity begins, but no visible changes.
Weeks 3–4: Skin hydration may improve, and inflammation begins to decrease.
By weeks 4–6: Increased resistance to sunburn (higher minimal erythema dose)
Reduced skin redness after sun exposure
Enhanced collagen protection and reduced oxidative damage

Have you experimented with Astaxanthin? Tell me your experience!

06/22/2025

Just cherishing my last days of Vermont and of nursing a 1 year old here, who will be 2 tomorrow! We have five weeks until we move to and in the meantime, we will be trying to soak up all of the beauty of the green mountain state. Because of the long day of the summer solstice yesterday, and the fact that our little one is up at five, we went to the Waterbury reservoir State Park, Curtis Pond, AND Camel’s Hump State Park yesterday! Which was good because per the typical Vermont summer it is raining and cool again today….

With the move, I’m here seeing clients virtually through mid-July, then will pick up again mid-August with virtual clients, and then I will be seeing people in person at starting in Sept 🥳 (and I will continue to see people virtually ongoing as well)