It’s Probably Not Just One Root Cause

Why It’s Probably Not Just One Root Cause (Even If You Really Want It to Be)

If you’ve spent any time in the chronic illness or wellness world, you’ve probably heard it: “You just need to find your root cause.”

It sounds comforting. Like there's one missing piece and if you just find it, everything will fall into place! But for most people, it's not one root cause. It's a whole tangled web. Nutrient deficiencies, hormone shifts, gut issues, nervous system dysregulation, mold, infections, blood sugar instability, inflammation, autoimmunity. These things interact and stack. They don’t show up one at a time or behave neatly. There is rarely a "this symptom points to this root cause" aha moment. Even when there are, you still need to unpack why that "cause" is happening in the first place.

I used to believe if I could just get my iron up, or clear the mold, or fix my hormones, I’d finally feel better. But every time I pulled on one string, I found a whole mess of knots underneath. Sometimes addressing one thing helped, but other times it kicked up symptoms in another area. There was always more to unpack.

Healing isn’t linear. It doesn’t come from chasing symptoms one by one or assuming every issue has a single cause. This kind of mechanistic thinking, like your body is a car that just needs a new belt or different gas, is kind of the problem with healthcare today. The truth is, your body isn’t broken. It’s adaptive. It's responding to the sum of everything you've been through and everything it’s managing right now. It's prioritizing whatever makes it able to get you through the day. Sometimes that even means your body will find ways to block your hormones so you slow down and get some actual rest!

With that in mind, I built Back to Balance. It’s not a supplement protocol or a detox plan. It’s a system for helping you figure out what’s really going on, what matters most right now, and how to work through it in a way that doesn’t fry your nervous system or leave you more confused.

We use a full-body symptom tracker and a roadmap to make sense of the patterns. You’ll learn how to spot the connections and work through them step by step. That's why the modules are in the order they are; we need to understand what's going on in our gut before we address nutrients, because if the gut is messed up, we can't absorb our nutrients well! We build on the knowledge you gain in each module. There's no guesswork, no “just cut gluten” advice pretending to be a cure. Just a process for sorting through the web to actually get it unraveled and get you unstuck.

So if you’re stuck in the loop of asking “Is it my thyroid? My histamine? My hormones? My gut?”, know that the answer is yes. It’s probably a little of everything. You're not meant to untangle it all at once. But there is a way through it. You just need a plan that meets you where you are and helps you work through the knots, one at a time.

Back to Balance is evolving. If you want to be the first to know when it's ready, get on the list. Join the interest list →

In the meantime, if you want a clear picture of what your thyroid is actually doing, you can order the Essential Thyroid Function panel directly through Fullscript. Order the Thyroid Panel →

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Jennifer Scanlon, MS, FDN-P, holds a Master of Science in Holistic Nutrition and a Bachelor of Health in Cardiopulmonary and Diagnostic Sciences. Before starting her nutrition practice, she spent more than a decade as a respiratory therapist working alongside physicians and nurses as part of the critical care team. Her role included neonatal resuscitation, ventilator management, blood gas analysis, and the assessment of critically ill patients, providing a strong foundation in physiology and clinical reasoning.

After facing her own health challenges that weren't fully explained by conventional testing, Jennifer returned to graduate school, completing her master's capstone on Hashimoto's disease and the gut-thyroid connection. She has since pursued advanced training in functional health assessment and spent years studying thyroid disorders, gut health, iron deficiency, histamine intolerance, MCAS, and the complex interactions between body systems.

Today, Jennifer helps women uncover potential contributors to symptoms that often fall through the cracks of standard evaluations. Her approach combines nutrition, lifestyle factors, functional testing, and conventional lab data to identify patterns and connect the dots between thyroid, gut, histamine, and hormone issues, helping women make sense of symptoms that are often dismissed when standard lab work comes back "normal." Visit the website here.

Disclaimer: I do not diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease or condition. Nothing I share is intended to substitute for the advice, treatment or diagnosis of a qualified licensed physician. I may not make any medical diagnoses or claim, nor substitute for your personal physician’s care. It is my role to partner with you to provide ongoing support and accountability in an opt-in model of self-care and any changes should be done under the supervision of a licensed physician.