My Health Journey: The Full Story Behind healYOUnaturally
A herniated disc. A diabetes scare. Years of acid reflux no pill could touch. This is what actually happened, and what it taught me about healing the natural way.
The Injury That Started It All: A Herniated Disc and Sciatica
Like a lot of people trying to live a healthy life through setbacks and stressful stretches, I’m no different than you. This journey started when I injured my back while working part time as a full time college student. What followed was a herniated disc and sciatic pain so severe, I still say it earns its own spot in the hall of pain. Nothing is more debilitating than that particular kind of agony. Labor has nothing on sciatica.
That injury forced me to learn, fast, how food, movement, and stress actually affect pain and inflammation. Lessons I’d lean on again years later, when GERD showed up.
Reversing My Gestational Diabetes Risk
Diabetes runs in my family, so when I developed gestational diabetes during pregnancy, it wasn’t exactly a shock. It was still a wake up call. With a strict low carb, high fat approach and consistent exercise, I reversed it before it became the Type II diabetes I was headed toward.
I still check my blood glucose regularly today. That experience is a big part of why I trust root cause, lifestyle first approaches over quick fixes. I’ve watched them work on my own lab results.
My GERD Story: Years of Misery Before I Found the Root Cause
This is the one most of you will relate to. I had my own share of miserable years with GERD and acid reflux, to the point that no matter what I ate, healthy or not, it made me sick. Years of discomfort, pain, and sleepless nights, thanks to GERD and indigestion, stacked on top of stressful workdays, late dinners, and habits I didn’t even know were feeding the problem.
I tried everything conventional medicine offered: over the counter acid blockers, proton pump inhibitors like Protonix, Prilosec, and Prevacid, plus antacids like Tums. I propped up my pillows so many nights that I gave myself a stiff neck, curving my spine into an unnatural position just to trade one problem for another. None of it touched the actual cause. It just masked the symptom, temporarily.
When I finally took matters into my own hands and went looking for the root cause instead of another way to mask it, everything changed. I learned which habits were quietly feeding my acid reflux, and which natural, inexpensive remedies actually worked. I can now say, confidently, that I’m GERD and acid reflux free for good. You’ll find the short version of this story on my About page; this is the long one.
From Web Developer to Wellness Educator
After earning my degree, I worked as a web developer in the corporate world for several years. The whole time, I kept chasing my growing interest in holistic medicine on the side, learning how to use food and lifestyle for healing. What felt like a setback at the time, walking away from decent, stable pay, turned out to be the pivotal moment that let me follow the dream I’d had for years: helping people like you get your health back, and get more good years with the people you love.
Why My Family Is My Why
My mission has always been bigger than me. Before my son was even conceived, I was already thinking about how to raise him as healthy as possible, and that mindset shaped everything that came after. Healthy child, happy child, and a healthy mom to go with him.
That’s really the throughline of this whole journey. Every remedy I test, every study I read, every protocol I build starts from the same question I asked as a soon-to-be mom: what does this body actually need to thrive, not just get by?
The Research I Trust
I don’t teach from opinion. I follow, study, and have interviewed some of the top naturopaths, functional nutritionists, and integrative medicine physicians in the field, and I dig into the actual research myself, not just the headlines about it.
A Few Studies Behind This Page (real, findable, PubMed indexed)
What This Journey Taught Me
Every single one of these stories, the disc, the diabetes, the reflux, taught me the same lesson from a different angle: your body is always talking to you. It’s rarely subtle. We’ve just been trained to reach for something that quiets the noise instead of asking what it’s trying to say.
I’m not special for figuring this out. I was just stubborn enough to keep asking why, even when “just manage it” would have been so much easier. That stubbornness is the whole reason healYOUnaturally exists, and it’s what I want to hand to you.
My Mission Today
healYOUnaturally’s mission is to promote natural, safe healing through education and advocacy: raising awareness of non-invasive approaches that restore physical and emotional health, backed by ongoing research from the holistic and integrative medicine field.
These days, most of that mission shows up through gut health and GERD. It’s where I’ve gone deepest, and it’s why I built the Heal GERD & Gut Disorders Holistically Academy, the 5-week program where you’ll find frameworks like the ROOTS Protocol alongside everything else I teach. But the story above is why I trust root causes over quick fixes in the first place.
Ready to Find Your Own Root Cause?
If any part of this story sounded familiar, start with the same question I had to ask myself: what’s actually causing this?