Overview
This episode features Rachel on the FDN Health Detective Podcast hosted by Evan Transue, where she shares her full personal health journey, the specific functional lab testing approaches she uses with autoimmune clients, her thoughts on whether autoimmunity is truly optional, and details about the advanced Lyme disease course she co-created with Dr. Tom Morcroft for the FDN program. This is a practitioner-focused conversation with a lot of practical information that is equally valuable for anyone navigating autoimmunity or searching for a better path forward.
You’ll Learn
- Rachel’s full health origin story from recurring pneumonia as an infant through digestive issues in childhood, hair loss, heart palpitations, trouble swallowing, anxiety, and panic attacks in her late teens and early 20s, culminating in an unnecessary exploratory heart surgery at approximately 21 years old that finally pushed her toward functional medicine
- Why Rachel believes autoimmunity is optional for most people and what remission actually means in practice, including examples of clients with MS going from debilitating pain and numbness to essentially normal function, alopecia clients regrowing full hair, rheumatoid arthritis clients eliminating joint pain completely, and a photographer whose wrist immobility fully resolved within four months without surgery
- The specific labs Rachel uses with autoimmune clients including the GI Map for bacterial and yeast overgrowth, secretory IGA levels, and pathogen identification, the Organic Acids Test which she prefers over the GI Map for detecting yeast and mold overgrowth due to greater sensitivity, and the HTMA for mineral status and heavy metal toxicity with aluminum and mercury being the most common findings
- Why she does not add the zonulin marker to the GI Map because she treats intestinal permeability as an assumed finding in virtually all autoimmune cases, and how she handles parasites including using symptom patterns as clinical clues and running a short herbal protocol even without a confirmed positive test
- The Autoimmune Paleo protocol she uses as a starting point for almost all chronic illness clients, what foods are additionally excluded beyond standard Paleo including nuts and seeds, eggs, nightshades, chocolate, and coffee, and how she navigates clients who struggle with restrictions using swaps rather than perfect compliance
- Why biofilm disruption with a product like Biocidin should come first in any pathogen protocol, followed by the antimicrobial itself, followed by a binder to capture die-off toxins, and why opening drainage pathways before any of this is essential to prevent clients from feeling severely worse
- How Rachel became interested in Lyme disease after encountering a client who was not responding to her standard protocols, and why she believes many chronic Lyme cases are misdiagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s, Hashimoto’s, and lupus because the tick exposure history was never investigated
- The advanced Lyme disease course Rachel co-created with Dr. Tom Morcroft for the FDN program, what it covers for practitioners including testing selection, herbal and antibiotic protocol considerations, and how the associated mentorship program gives practitioners ongoing one-on-one support from both Rachel and Dr. Morcroft
Have more fun. Play. Be goofy. Be yourself. We get so obsessed with optimizing our health that we forget that letting go and actually enjoying life is one of the most powerful things we can do for it
Read to uncover your root causes and heal?
If you’re struggling with an autoimmune disease, thyroid issues, gut problems, or mystery health issues that conventional medicine can’t explain, I can help. Through functional medicine lab testing, we will uncover what’s really going on in your body and create customized protocols to help you heal. If you’re ready to reverse your health issues naturally, you can book a health consultation with myself or someone on my team below.
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