I went on Accutane for the acne, birth control for the PMS, and while things felt better for a time, the stomach pain just kept getting worse. Wearing jeans was a nightmare, and don’t get me started on looking 6 months pregnant with bloat....

Cue the anxiety.

And when I say anxiety, I mean the debilitating kind. The kind that made the simplest things, like leaving my house to walk Lenny, feel like the scariest task in the world. Tunnel vision, heart palpitations, and a near-constant fear of fainting— this became the norm.

I went to my doctor for all of these problems, and I was always met with a prescription.

As a teenager, I accepted these band-aid solutions, but as I got older and started to think more critically, I started to question what I could do to help myself, beyond just taking a prescription.

And with some research, I discovered there was A LOT I could do. Namely, my first big discovery was I had something called SIBO (or small intestine bacterial overgrowth).

Essentially, this is an overgrowth that can result in fermentation in the small intestine when you eat certain types of carbs, which leads to painful bloating (yes, that kind that leaves you looking six months pregnant when you’re definitely anything but pregnant).

This was NOT something that was brought up to me by my doctor. This was something I discovered myself through my research. I actually had to order my own test to determine that this was something I had.

And that was it, once the test came back positive, I was off to the races! I discovered the power of advocating for myself and looking beyond conventional healthcare. And that meant that the natural-born researcher in me wanted to know EVERYTHING about SIBO. I started listening to podcasts, reading books, and Googling symptoms like a mad woman.

While I don’t necessarily recommend this approach, I learned so much during this time and started to cultivate an appreciation for more holistic approaches to healthcare, which is when I started working with a naturopath and joined a group health coaching program that opened my eyes to how much control I had when it came to how I felt in my body.

I started meditating, I stopped boredom snacking, I prioritized my sleep, and I started to get very intentional about what I put in my body (tracking my symptoms so I could get crystal clear about what foods were causing my digestive issues).

I was hooked on this new way of life, and it soon became obvious this newfound interest in health and wellness wasn’t simply an interest. It was a passion, and I wanted to learn everything that I could, which is when I enrolled in the Nutritional Therapy Practitioner Program with the Nutritional Therapy Association.