Overcoming Chronic Fatigue and Digestive Issues Through Personalized Functional Medicine Protocols

I feel hopeful that I'm on the right track now, finally, and I'm actually feeling excited about kind of taking charge of my health again and feeling like I have more autonomy in this than I began with, which is priceless to me. My name is Nina and I'm from Ellensburg, Washington. I would say before working with Natalie, I really struggled a lot with chronic fatigue and a whole variety of digestive problems. And I'd often wake up feeling really tired and I would be exhausted by the afternoon with a lot of energy slumps. I also struggled a lot with blood sugar crashes and ⁓ having anxiety about when I would have my next meal because I wanted to really make sure I wasn't going to experience that. So... Over the past seven years, I've sought out a lot of different help, trying to get to the root of the problem, including doctors and GI specialists. But really no one was able to pinpoint the source of my problems or really work with me on a personalized plan for healing. I was really drawn to Natalie's approach, which is really ⁓ looking at functional medicine. So I loved how she combines both holistic care and science-backed testing. I'm a really detail-oriented person who loves to get into the kind data-driven side of things. And I've also been interested in more naturopathic options, but it's been hard for me to find somebody that really combines both of those things. And I could tell right away in my first consultation with Natalie that she was so thorough in answering my questions and she really took care to kind of walk me through the research behind her approach and the personalized side of how a healing plan could work for me. I feel like a lot of conventional providers that I've seen ⁓ either didn't really take the time to get to know my history and the current things I was experiencing in the same way that Natalie really did. she was super thorough in kind of giving me questionnaires about what are the things that I'm going through. And then she also really took a lot of time to educate me on the why and the how. For me, that was really important to be able to put together, okay, what are these elements in my healing plan and what are they being applied to? That way, for me, who always has a lot of questions, it really grounded me in the protocol and made me feel like we were working on something together. I would say since working with Natalie, my energy has been the best that it's been in years. So that was such a big component for me because I feel like... at the baseline, energy is kind how you go about everything in your life. that was always such a tricky piece of the puzzle for me. But now I actually wake up with a lot more kind of optimism for the day and able to kind of get up and start going. and she's really helped me implement a lot of practices that I think bring me a lot of peace. So something that I really enjoy doing now is kind of going on a daily walk, right? First thing in the morning kind of helps get me energized and feeling ready for the day. And I feel like a lot of this also comes back to feeling hopeful again. I feel like before I was working with Natalie, I was at a point where I was really feeling hopeless about getting better. a lot of the symptoms that I experienced were these kind of vague, energy-related, digestive things that were just hard to nail down. And Natalie really helped me research and figure out what would work best and try a couple different things. I would say to myself a year ago, I would really encourage myself to not give up and know that that hopeless feeling does not need to stay that way and it will not stay that way. And I think... having patience and an open mind continues to be such an important part of healing. I feel like a year ago, I was really lost and disconnected with my body. So I feel like through this process and through the collaboration with Natalie, I've really gotten to reconnect to that. And to me, that's really special. I think just to give Natalie a shout out, she's just so, so kind and I think very thoughtful in everything that she does. And I think in today's day and age when people are moving so quickly and a lot of conventional providers maybe don't have the time to really sit down with you and get to know you as a person and... really curate solutions for you that are taking into account your whole system. I think Natalie does that in such a masterful way and really listens to her clients. And if I ever expressed being kind of hesitant or nervous about anything, she was really kind about listening to those concerns and working with me on something that... allowed me to kind of gain confidence in the approach we were using or adapt if something wasn't working well. So I think her high touch approach is just really, really just amazing. I feel like I said, I just feel like I have more hope now than I ever did on working on these things. so. ⁓ I am just so grateful to her for that, for restoring kind of my outlook and realizing that you don't have to suffer through alone on a lot of these things. She was with me every step of the way and yeah, I couldn't thank her enough for that.