Patient Story
Postpartum Exhaustion and Brain Fog
Summary
Ashley had a baby three years before filming and kept waiting to feel like herself again. She was exhausted all the time, foggy, having a hard time thinking through her tasks, and gaining weight in a way she did not want despite cutting sugary drinks, focusing on protein and vegetables, and doing CrossFit. Anxiety medication and antidepressants had not worked, so she decided to look at it from a different perspective and found functional medicine. Lab work showed she was depleted of her basic nutrients, with very low vitamin D and, opposite to what she had expected, extremely low cortisol. Working with Colin Renaud, PA-C, she now has the energy to run around outside with her kid every day.
Before Med Matrix
- Three years postpartum and still not feeling like herself
- Insanely tired all the time; could not get out of bed
- Not motivated to do things; small tasks like the dishes felt overwhelming just to look at
- Brain fog and a hard time thinking through her tasks
- Trouble focusing, felt very distracted
- Gaining weight in a bad way, not as muscle, despite a completely changed diet and CrossFit
- Anxiety medication and antidepressants she had tried were not working
- Vitamin D very low; describes herself as really depleted of her basic nutrients
- Extremely low cortisol, the opposite of the high cortisol she had expected from what she was seeing online
- Describes her body as stuck in fight or flight mode, basically where it was when she had her baby
Results
- Has a lot of energy to run around with her kid, and they are outside running around every day
- Able to focus, where before she felt very distracted
- Describes a new sense of striving forward
- Hitting her goals more easily and feeling less stressed about them because she is constantly measuring results
- More confidence from tracking a full body scan regularly instead of guessing on the scale
- Felt very educated about her own labs and how different results, nutrients and levels affect each other
- Felt taken care of and paid attention to when the team caught and re-ran the odd lab result
- Her best friend, who was on the fence, started at the clinic after seeing Ashley's results
Key Quotes
“I had a baby 3 years ago and I thought after a year or so I would start feeling more myself and then another year went by and I still didn't feel like a person, or at least who I used to be.”
“I just was insanely tired all the time. Like I couldn't get out of bed. I just was not motivated to do things.”
“It felt like I finally was talking to someone who was listening to the whole picture instead of just focusing on one little thing.”
“I now have a lot of energy to run around with my kid, which was a huge motivating factor for me. I would try to find ways to sit on the ground and play with him more because I just didn't have the energy at the end of the day, and now especially with it being nice out, we're just outside running around every day.”
Treatments
Conditions
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