Rootera Wellness Helps Find Root Causes When Labs Look 'Normal'

01What does your business do, in your own words?

I help busy, health-conscious men and women who are doing everything right and whose labs look "normal," but still know something isn't right. Through functional lab testing and personalized protocols, we address root causes to begin healing.

02How did you get started? Give us the origin story.

I've been struggling with my health and weight for a long time. Anxiety since I was young. Acne. Overweight through childhood. Migraines at 8 years old. Digestive issues that never fully made sense. I'd eat pizza and drink a Coke and feel so sick afterward that I genuinely thought something was wrong with me. I quit drinking soda before I was 12 because it hurt so much.

I had an EGD at 16 for chronic heartburn and reflux. It would wake me up at night with a racing heart and a wave of anxiety I couldn't explain. Looking back, I now recognize that my body was showing signs of being under a lot of stress, but I didn't have the language to understand what was happening.

At some point, I decided to cut out gluten, even though I didn't have a formal test telling me to. A lot of people told me I was too obsessed and that I didn't have proof I needed to eliminate it. But I felt better. That, along with strength training, helped enough that I kept going. The acne stuck around, though. The digestive issues, weight loss resistance, and migraines stuck around. My periods were bad enough to put me in bed for 1 to 2 days every month. And no matter what I did, dieting, training, staying in a deficit, my weight wouldn't move consistently.

Then, in my late 20s, after COVID and career stress, everything got significantly worse. Chest pain. Heart palpitations. Anxiety that wouldn't quit. Exhausted but wired. I even fainted a few times during emotionally stressful moments. I remember lying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night after a particularly bad flare because I was too weak to move or call for help.

I saw a cardiologist, multiple internal medicine doctors, a neurologist, several PCPs, an endocrinologist, and functional medicine doctors. I wore a Holter monitor. I had test after test. And again and again, I was told everything was "normal." Eventually, I did get answers: Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, POTS, Endometriosis, and PCOS. But having diagnoses didn't necessarily mean I had answers.

The treatment options I was offered often focused on managing individual symptoms, hormonal birth control, antidepressants, Singulair, Allegra, Pepcid, and other prescriptions with advice like exercise more, eat less, but I still didn't understand why my body was struggling in so many different ways. I felt like I was constantly putting out fires. One symptom would improve, another would show up. But I still didn't feel like anyone was looking at the whole picture. And that's what frustrated me the most. I wanted to understand what was happening in my body. I wanted to understand why.

So eventually, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and that search is ultimately what led me to FDN.

Running my own foundational labs through the program uncovered an H. pylori infection that had previously been considered "not significant" during an EGD that resulted in a GERD diagnosis and a PPI prescription. The testing also revealed dysbiosis, an imbalance in my gut microbiome I'd never had investigated before, including an overgrowth of Pseudomonas.

That finding was especially interesting to me. Years later, I learned that certain strains of Pseudomonas have been studied for the way their enzymes break down gluten. Rather than completely breaking it down, they can produce smaller gluten peptides that may interact differently with the intestinal barrier and immune system. Does that prove Pseudomonas caused my issues with gluten? No. But suddenly, something I'd noticed in my own body years earlier had a potential biological explanation I'd never considered.

For the first time, I wasn't looking at one symptom or one lab value in isolation. I could put my digestive health, hormones, stress response, metabolism, symptoms, and history next to each other and start asking how they might be connected. It wasn't about finding one root cause responsible for everything. It was about finally seeing patterns.

I'm still healing. This time last year, I was dealing with migraines almost every week, constant muscle tension, difficulty taking a satisfying deep breath, headaches, gas, bloating, nausea, reflux, and energy dips after lunch bad enough that I sometimes struggled to stay alert behind the wheel.

Six months into following my own personalized protocol, breathwork, nervous system regulation, intentional supplementation, nutrition changes, and removing foods identified through my testing that appeared to be contributing to symptoms, things look very different. My energy is slowly coming back. My strength is coming back. I'm able to do more without feeling like my body is constantly fighting me.

And something I never expected to be able to say: I'm eating more than I ever have while sitting at the lowest weight I've been as an adult. I'm fueling my workouts instead of constantly trying to eat less. I've cut out all caffeine except one cup in the morning. My intense dessert cravings are gone. And I've learned to recognize the stress triggers that used to send me into a flare and intervene before they escalate.

I still have hard days. I still have flares. A heavy leg day can still trigger one, and I'm definitely not where I want to be yet. I still get acne when I introduce a new supplement or go through a period of increased stress, but it isn't the painful, cystic acne I used to deal with. When I compare where I am now to where I was a year ago, there's no question that things have improved.

My body didn't need me to fight it harder. I needed to understand what it was telling me. That's also a huge part of why I became an FDN practitioner. I want to help other people ask better questions about their health, recognize patterns, and investigate potential hidden stressors before years go by feeling stuck in the same cycle of trial and error.

Rootera Wellness is the culmination of years of research, trial and error, and everything in between. I built this business to help others like me, people who are tired of being tired, who are finally ready to get some answers with lifelong results.

03What would locals be surprised to learn about you or the business?

Born and raised in Leander, Texas.

04What's your favorite customer story?

One of my clients is 80 years old. She came to me frustrated after her doctor prescribed her another medication, another test, and no new answers. We're working on her chronic inflammation. Due to her age and her prescriptions, I have to be very careful and informed with every step. So far, we've managed to improve her sleep by calming her mind and body. That's a win and we've barely scratched the surface.

05What's the hardest part of running this business that nobody sees?

Marketing and sales for an online business. I may be young, but I'm old fashioned. I'd rather meet face-to-face. I still handwrite my notes and print my research.

06Why here? What made you choose this area?

It's always been a passion of mine. I would have gotten into it sooner, but there were many in my youth who told me the health industry was not going to provide any stability.

07What's changed most in the area since you opened?

I think the easier question is, what hasn't changed? I remember when New Hope was one lane road.

08What's next for the business this year?

I'm currently studying mold and Lyme disease related disorders. Certification coming soon.