Functional genetics is the study of how your genes behave, not just what genes you have.

Your DNA is like an instruction book your body was born with. It tells your body how to build and repair itself, how to behave, and how to handle things like food, stress, inflammation, and energy. But your genes are influenced every day by food, stress, sleep, environment, and lifestyle.

Functional genetics looks at how these factors interact with your biology and how certain systems in your body may need more support than others. I help people understand their own instruction book so they can work with their body instead of fighting it.

This approach doesn’t predict disease. it offers insight into how your body processes nutrients, manages stress, handles inflammation, and responds to modern life.

This is incredibly common, and it’s not your fault.

“Healthy” foods and supplements are often recommended in a broad sense, but everyone's body is unique. Differences in digestion, genetics, biochemistry, gut health, detox pathways, and stress load all affect how well your body actually uses what you’re giving it.

In some cases, foods or supplements that are helpful for some can quietly (or loudly!) create stress for others. Feeling unwell doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It usually means that there are deeper reactions happening, many times at the cellular level. Many times we can be stuck in negative feedback loops in our biochemistry. These include pathways that we may uncover at the genetic level.

Foods like spinach, almonds, bone broth, fermented foods, or certain supplements can be incredibly nourishing for some people and problematic for others.

This can be due to factors like:

• Gut imbalances

• Immune sensitivity

• Genetic differences in detoxification or nutrient processing

• Nervous system overload

• Anti-nutrient stress
  

Signs you might be affected include bloating, fatigue, headaches, anxiety, skin issues, food allergies, or symptoms that seem inconsistent or unexplained. Functional nutrition and genetics help identify patterns and problem areas so food becomes supportive and nourishing to your body.

Yes. I work with adults and children who have complex, layered health challenges.

Rather than focusing on diagnoses, I focus on the body systems involved and how they interact. Many families are navigating multiple stressors at once: neurological, immune, digestive, and environmental. I pay attention to patterns, subtle signals, and how stress, food, and the environment affect the body.

Looking into a client's genetics has been monumental in targeting complex health challenges.

Inflammation is not the same for everyone.

Instead of assuming a single cause, I look at multiple contributors such as food responses, stress physiology, immune signaling, nutrient needs, detox pathways, and environmental inputs.

The goal is not to suppress symptoms, but to understand what’s driving the body’s inflammatory response and support it in a way that feels sustainable and realistic for the individual.

My work is deeply personal. There was a time when illness consumed nearly every part of my life.

Chronic Lyme disease did not simply make me sick. Over the course of years, it changed what I was capable of doing, how I saw my future, and eventually how I saw myself.

Back then, I was a young adult with enormous curiosity, plans, passions, and a very clear sense of where my life was going. Then my world became increasingly centered around symptoms, appointments, treatments, restrictions, and the exhausting search for the next answer.

I watched pieces of the person I had known myself to be disappear.

And the hardest part was that I was trying so hard to get well.

I followed protocols and researched constantly. I sought help. I did so many of the things I was told were “right” for years, yet my body continued to struggle.

Eventually, I realized I needed to stop asking “What can I take to make this symptom go away?” and began asking a much bigger question:

What created the conditions for my body to become this overwhelmed in the first place, and what conditions would allow it to thrive again?

This mindset shift changed the direction of my life.

I began studying nutrition, herbs, genetics, environmental influences, nervous system regulation, sleep, light, and the countless signals our bodies receive from the world around us. What initially looked like separate health problems began to reveal themselves as interconnected patterns.

And slowly, I began rebuilding.

Not through one miracle protocol, but by learning to understand my body as a whole.

My world opened again. I regained function, clarity, strength, and something even more valuable: trust in my ability to understand and support my own health. I was able to go back to school to study all this in more depth.

Along the way, I also found myself returning to something I had missed so much before I became sick: the natural world.

Sunlight and real food. Plants and fresh air. Growing my own vegetables and herbs. Seasonal rhythms. Getting my hands into the soil.

Getting back to nature filled my heart with joy, especially as a lifelong birder. But what was really interesting is that nature stopped feeling like a hobby, separate from health. It became part of how I understood it. The earth and our connection to it became an essential need for our bodies' function, right down to our genetics.

Then, when my own children faced separate neuro-inflammatory challenges, everything I had learned became even more personal. I found myself becoming the practitioner I once desperately needed, looking for patterns, asking deeper questions, and using nutrition, individualized genetics, lifestyle, and an environmental shift to aid in the proper function within their bodies.

Those experiences ultimately shaped the philosophy behind the work I do today.

I no longer see health as a collection of isolated symptoms, genes, nutrients, or diagnoses.

I see health as an ecosystem.

Our genetics interact with our nutrition. Our environment communicates with our biology. Our sleep, stress, light exposure, movement, relationships, food, and daily rhythms continuously influence the terrain in which health either struggles or flourishes.

My journey taught me that meaningful healing rarely comes from finding one perfect answer. It comes from learning to see the whole landscape. And that is why this work matters so deeply to me.

My passion as a healer is to help those struggling connect to nature's power and find answers through both science and earth-based healing: targeted herbs, sunlight, earthing, growing your own food, fresh eggs, and so much more. To me, genetics and homesteading go hand-in-hand!

I want to help people understand their own health ecology, recognize the patterns that matter, and discover just how much influence they may have in creating the conditions for themselves and their families to thrive.

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For anyone who likes to read or wants to learn more about my personal journey, I wrote a chapter in The Cost of Strength, part of The Brave Voice Project, about how my health completely unraveled and the perseverance I exerted to save my life and shift my life's mission from becoming a paleontologist to becoming a healer.
*I do not receive any compensation for purchases of The Cost of Strength; this was a labor of love in hopes of inspiring readers to be their own health advocate.