My backstory with hormone imbalance started just months after I married my high school sweetheart, one month out of college. We honeymooned in Mexico, and then started our first jobs in the real world: he as a high school science teacher and me as a magazine editor, which I would soon transition to an entry level job in corporate America at a large book publisher.
The migraines I had had most of my teenage life were starting to become more frequent until they became daily. My first two doctors tried what they could with me, sent me on to neurologists and headache specialists, and that is where my journey began: with a Doctor's note to my employer asking that the fluorescent lighting above my cubicle be turned off so I could function at work. So much for the corner office I aspired to someday.
Friday nights with my newlywed husband were spent frequenting local Urgent Cares for narcotic injections so that I could knock myself out and escape the pain. This made me feel like there was something wrong with me. Newlyweds should be out having fun on the weekends. If we dared to venture to an NFL game or go out on the town for a date night, I always, always had my little blue painkiller pill in my pocket. This is what my life looked like circa 2008.
By 2011, I had seen 3 primary care doctors, 2 neurologists, a spinal specialist, and 2 chiropractors, and had tried over a dozen preventative migraine medications, painkillers, Botox, 4 total neck surgeries, 2 different anti-seizure drug infusions, and, thanks to the drugs I had been guinea pig for, I passed 16 kidney stones in one summer.
You could say I was at rock bottom.
I was sick of sitting in waiting rooms, of waking every morning with pain, and for forfeiting my career due to the lack of focus and effort I could really put forth.
On a walk one day, my good friend and yoga instructor (yep, I tried yoga along the way, too) talked me off of a ledge. I was at wit's end, running out of the energy needed to maintain this fight for answers, and I needed help in so many ways. I'll never forget her words to me...
"You can't give up now."
She gave me the information of a local holistic practitioner who specialized in women's hormones. I told her no way. I had tried every possible type of doctor with zero results. After all, my OB/GYN had said she didn't think hormones were at play for me. She encouraged me anyway, because that's what friends do. I made the appointment.
I liken finding this Doctor, my now functional medicine M.D., to a woman finally finding her true love after dating many men. The other doctors and I had not meshed, and I had felt so much like a puppet, trying their drugs and concoctions and making follow-up appointments like it was a full-time job. I remember feeling like no one was ever willing to look at my body as a whole. All of the brain scans, pap smears, and specialized testing looked normal, which meant most appointments up until meeting THIS doctor felt like experts were telling me I was crazy.
With just 2 visits to my now Doctor, I had testing done that no one had attempted before, and we discovered some pretty incredible hormone imbalances that were going on with me, which she believed to be the cause of not only my migraine hell, but my infertility, my 35 lb. weight gain, and my low quality of life.
It was around this same time that a friend introduced me to a home fitness program and I decided to go all in on it. It humbled me in the first day, but I stuck with it, and I kept going. I used exercise as a distraction to my pain. Only folks truly in chronic pain will understand what I mean.
Slowly, my life started to change. Exercising led to learning more about nutrition and altering my diet, and before I knew it, I was training my body, eating real food and treating it as fuel, supplementing for my hormone imbalance, and as a result, sleeping better than ever. I started working in harmony with my female physiology, and everything started to shift.
My relationship changed, for the better.
My body changed, and I lost 35 lbs.
Most importantly, my headaches went from every day, to just 2-3 days per month, and were always tied to my menstrual cycle.
I became obsessed with how I was feeling so much so that I became a personal trainer, fitness nutrition specialist, and certified in various nutrition programs. I left my corporate job and operated my own gym for close to 5 years before starting a family.
I found hormone balance in my mid to late 20's and was the definition of fit. But in my early 30's, the pain started to come back, along with some weight gain, fatigue, and other unwanted symptoms.
I knew something wasn't right.
But this time, I knew how to navigate and find answers. And, as if the heavens aligned at the right time, various experts entered the space of women's hormone health. Experts like Dr. Stacy Sims, Alisa Vitti, and Lara Briden, to name a few. I dug into their research and their books, and found myself submersed in podcasts and online courses paving my own path for my health.
With this knowledge I took the tools I had loved for years, at-home workout programs, combined with the nutritional supplements I had used for years, and instead of just pushing myself through the calendar provided, or eating whatever I craved/was used to, I started to SYNC with my cycle.
I optimized my daily fitness to my infradian rhythm, which meant resting during certain phases of my cycle and pushing hard and strength training in others.
I optimized nutrition, and things like seed cycling and increasing omegas to fight inflammation, in conjunction with the 4 phases of my cycle.
I supplemented nutritionally through superfoods and vitamins to help my body detoxify the things it was finding toxic and function the way it was designed to function.
In other words, I had navigated my way to good health again, for a second time in my life, despite hormonal imbalance setbacks, which helped solidify this idea that became my new mantra:
I am my own best Doctor.
Soon, I started to receive messages from women asking for my help. Many of them, and many of their daughters, were dealing with inconsistent periods, inexplainable weight gain, lack of energy, PMS, and so much more. They were often doing all of the things: exercising and working with a Dr., but not seeing improvement.
That's when I decided I needed to take everything I had learned about navigating my own health and teach it to other women. Because it shouldn't take 10+ years and a journey like mine, full of struggle and pain, to get answers.
And thus, the SYNC program was born.