Being in the health and wellness industry was not something I had planned - rather it was something that came to me out of my own personal struggles and journey. I got diagnosed with severe hypothyroidism at the age of 16 - this was a huge awakening for me and required a complete life overhaul, getting my mind around being on medication for life and understanding WHY thyroid imbalance happens in the first place. I wasn’t given much information at the time and over the years realized that any questions I ever asked my doctors were never answered with the information I was looking for. “It’s normal”, “it’s just part of the process”, “it happens” were becoming all too common answers that were not convincing. I also suffered with gut health imbalances, hormonal imbalances and debilitating PMS, a thyroid cancer diagnosis in 2020 and a miscarriage in 2022.
Each part of this journey has been a turning point for me in discovering more about my body and the science behind how it functions. The more I understood its mechanisms, the more I was fascinated by how many things in our environments, diets and lifestyles can impact our health physically, mentally, emotionally & spiritually. And what truly ignited the fire in me to pursue this career was that I had learned so much in my journey that wasn’t being shared enough with women worldwide.
I realized more and more that unless we address our health from a 360 perspective, giving ourselves space to heal will be much more difficult otherwise. Women were consistently given bandaid solutions without getting to the root of the issue in the first place. And this is where my love for Functional Medicine really grew.
So it is my mission to create a bigger impact in helping as many women as possible feel more in tune with their bodies, empower them to realize their innate ability to heal themselves and finally learn to love and appreciate all their bodies do for them.
It is so important for us to go back to the foundations of health and balance and learn what makes our female physiology truly flourish and function at its best. We have steered so far from the basics, focused so extensively on the ‘fancy’ and forgotten how to put ourselves first.
So it’s not only critical for me to understand and spread awareness on the how and why behind the development of symptoms and chronic conditions in our bodies, but more importantly what we can do about it from a foundational and sustainable angle in our everyday lives to come back to ourselves and come back to our health as women.
Society & this world needs healthy women!
Valeo has supported me through this journey by providing an easy, accessible platform and service to get the testing I need without the bureaucracy of the conventional system and insurance! It has made it easier for me to be an advocate for my health and getting the resources I need to gather all the data and information about my health through necessary lab work.
The biggest turning point for me I think was about 5 or 6 years ago when I reached burn out, felt my health was waning, felt suffocated, felt defeated in many ways. I quit my job, took a whole year off to take care of myself and my health and got certified as a coach. It was my calling waiting to happen and I have never looked back!
https://sandrasharpewellness.mykajabi.com/rebalance-method