The body kept the score.
For years, I lived with it. The brain fog. The bloating. The fatigue that no amount of sleep could fix. Food sensitivities that seemed to multiply. Anxiety as a a result of a nervous system that was in constant activation I was living an active, full life on the outside — but running on empty.
Doctors called it autoimmune, but the root of the problem remained. Their honest answer was: we don't know. I knew that wasn't good enough. With a background in biochemistry, I understood what they weren't saying — that the body's systems are deeply interconnected, that the gut, the immune system, the brain, and the endocrine system don't operate in silos. You can't patch one without addressing the whole.
So I stopped chasing symptoms, and started treating the system.