I'm Writing A Book!

It’s been awhile since I wrote a blog post, and I should really be packing for our family’s two-week trip to The Netherlands, but I’m just too excited about my next project. Life has been full of ups and downs for our family the past year or so, and it’s inspired me to write a book filled with all the health knowledge I’ve expanded on and learned over that time. But wait - I think I may be getting ahead of myself, here. Let me explain how I got to this place in the first place. 

A Lifelong Health Journey

I’ve always been interested in the science of health, which makes it so frustrating when my family or I’m not well. Being diagnosed with high cholesterol was a big surprise to me early this year, and I’ve also been suffering from many symptoms of early menopause. It’s even worse when one of my kids is unwell, and my teenage son has been navigating his own health challenges this year, too. 

I was supporting him with the things I knew best, but it took six months before we were finally able to see an Integrative Health Pediatrician. She told us that we were doing a lot of the right things to help him bounce back from a reactivation of the Epstein-Barr virus (yay!), but that due to an overgrowth of “bad” organisms in his gut, he wasn’t able to absorb many of the nutrients we were providing him. 

Simply, it all led back to his gut. The doctor thinks it’s likely that his gut wasn’t completely healed from when he had a bone infection over ten years ago. But I’m starting to think it could go back further than that. After all, why would a healthy six year old boy get a bone infection? And why, even while helping my family live the healthiest lifestyle I could, did my daughter suffer from daily migraines through her teens? It feels like just existing in our modern world leaves us open to gut health issues. 

Getting Serious About Gut Health

It was helping my son through that bone infection, the heavy antibiotics used to treat it, and then the resulting behavior issues, that got me interested in pursuing a health coach certification in the first place. Even back then, I tacked on an extra gut health course. This was well before the recent interest in it, and now it seems that a whole industry has sprouted up around it. Unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with selling supplements, and even with my knowledge, it is hard to navigate. 

The more I learn about gut health from the rapidly exploding amount of research, the more I realize that it affects absolutely every aspect of health. In a perfect world, every person would have access to the knowledge of our Integrative Doctor and the tests that confirmed my son’s diagnosis. But, at least in the US, not everyone has access to a specialist and there aren’t enough doctors trained in this specialty (at least not yet).

As I’ve pondered this, I’ve realized that over and over gut health has been at the forefront of the health of both of my kids. In fact, I’ve wondered if it may have started with me! The jury is still out on that.

Back To The Book

My husband has been after me to write a book for some time. I’ve always told him that the time isn’t right. I didn’t have a burning desire to write one and wasn’t sure exactly what I would write about, anyway.

Well, in the last few weeks it came to me that I am ready to write a book; one about gut health for regular people. I know that I can help a lot of people, by not only sharing what I know, but by sharing the most current research in an easily digestible form.

I’m not sure whether this counts as an announcement or a way to hold myself accountable! All I know is that I’m really excited and while there’s a lot of work to be done, I know that I’ll be able to impact the biggest number of people by researching and writing about what I learn.