My Challenge

I'm the mother of three grown daughters and wife to a wonderful husband. Up until my late 30's, I thought I was blessed with great health. My metabolic test results were normal. All 3 of my pregnancies were uneventful.  I ate what I thought was a good, healthy diet, with far more vegetables than what the USDA recommended. Since I've always been interested in cooking, nutrition and organic food production, I enrolled in a health coaching program at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. This experience led me to question my "good" health and certain symptoms my doctor described as normal.  I challenged my doctor and insisted on more in-depth thyroid testing. I learned that I had Hashimoto's, an autoimmune condition of the thyroid that later developed into Graves disease. When I asked my doctor of 15 years what could be done, her response was that I would be put on drugs, my thyroid eventually would burn out and likely be surgically removed or ablated, and that a synthetic thyroid medicine would support me for the remainder of my life.