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Medications certainly have their place, but what if there was a way to support your body naturally by working with your genetics?
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We are a pill for an ill society.
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We take 18 pills per person per American per day.
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It was so hard to find somebody who took my insurance.
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And for me to get well, it took thousands of dollars.
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And I thought, what do regular people do?
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This is not right.
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Despite my best efforts, I wasn't actually reversing disease and helping people to heal in the way that I thought I would.
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We want to empower yourselves to take care of this root cause.
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We don't just want to cover it up.
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If you're ready to break free from outdated, one-size-fits-all health care, you're in the right place.
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Welcome to Raise the Script with Nutrigenomics, brought to you by Inner Glow by Life Balance.
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Here's a literature from we're all unique, right down to our DNA.
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So it's no wonder we respond differently to the same medications, foods, and environments.
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How do you discover what your body needs?
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Which medications, foods, supplements, or exercises are right for you?
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How can you manage chronic conditions without piling on more prescriptions?
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That's what we're here to explore.
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I'm your host, Dr.
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Tamar Lawful, Doctor of Pharmacy, Neutrogenomics Specialist, and your partner in reimagining how we personalize care for better outcomes.
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Whether you're a patient or a practitioner, let's raise the script and bring health care to higher levels together.
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Because the future of health is personal.
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Welcome back to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics, where we raise the script on health care together.
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I'm your host, Dr.
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Tamar Lawful, Doctor of Pharmacy and Nutrition or Genomics Specialist.
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You know, I wanted to talk about the episode that we aired last week.
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We had this powerful conversation with Dr.
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Bruce Gillis.
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He shared how fibromyalgia, a condition that affects an estimated 4 million U.S.
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adults, or about 2% of the population, according to the CDC, was brushed off for decades as if it didn't even exist.
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Patients, mostly women, were told their pain was all in their head.
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But Dr.
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Gillis and his team proved otherwise.
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They discovered measurable immune abnormalities in fibromyalgia patients and even developed the world's first blood test to diagnose it.
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That breakthrough gave patients something they had been denied for years, validation.
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Now, I want you to sit with this for a second.
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Imagine waking up every day in pain, exhausted, foggy, and being told, your labs are fine.
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Maybe it's stress.
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That dismissal, that disbelief can actually deepen the suffering.
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Research shows people with fibromyalgia have higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts compared to the general population, and stigma plays a big role in that.
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But here's the thing fibromyalgia is just one example.
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There are millions of people out there who are told your tests are normal, nothing's wrong.
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And yet they know in their bones something is off.
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That's the gap we're diving into today.
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And the missing piece, it might just be in your DNA.
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Here's the problem.
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Standard labs are designed to detect disease when it's already obvious.
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They're reactive, not predictive.
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Let me give a few examples.
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Blood sugar.
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Your fasting glucose might look normal, but that doesn't mean your metabolism is working optimally.
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By the time your A1C flags prediabetes, your body may have been struggling for years.
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DNA can show if you carry genes like TCF7L2, which raise the risk of insulin resistance long before it shows up in labs.
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Cholesterol.
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Maybe your cholesterol panel looks fine, but you still have a family history of heart disease.
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Standard labs don't tell you if you carry the ApoE4 gene, which increases risk for both cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's.
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That's information you'd want to know today, not 20 years from now.
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Then there's thyroid.
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You might have fatigue, weight gain, or hair loss.
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But if your TSH is in the normal range, many doctors stop investigating.
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DNA can reveal variants that affect how your thyroid hormones are converted and used, explaining symptoms even when labs say you're fine.
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Then there's vitamin processing.
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A blood test may show adequate folate, but if you carry an MTHFR variant, your body can't officially convert it into the active form your cells need.
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That leaves you tired, moody, or foggy despite a normal lab result.
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See the pattern?
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Routine labs are like waiting for the smoke detector to go off.
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DNA tells you whether their wiring is faulty, whether the house is prone to overheating, and what you can do to prevent the fire in the first place.
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That's why so many people hear everything looks normal while their bodies are screaming that something is not.
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Let's dig deeper into how genetics explains what standard labs miss.
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Going back to the MTHFR gene, up to 40% of the population has some form of this variant.
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If your MTFR gene isn't working efficiently, your body may struggle to activate folate and B vitamins.
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That affects energy, detox, and even mood.
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Labs might say your folate is fine, but your cells aren't using it properly.
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Then there is a COMT gene.
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This gene affects how quickly you clear stress hormones like adrenaline.
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If you're a slow metabolizer, stress sticks around in your system longer.
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You might replay that heated conversation at work all night, feel tension in your muscles for hours, and over time, this increases pain sensitivity.
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Research has linked C OMT variants to greater risk of chronic pain disorders.
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Third, we have the clock gene, C L O C K.
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This gene regulates your circadian rhythm, your sleep-wake cycle.
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If it's misaligned, you may have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up refreshed.
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A review in Sleep Medicine Reviews highlighted that circadian rhythm disruptions play a major role in both chronic pain and mood disorders.
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And last, the FTO gene.
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Sometimes called the fat mass and obesity gene, it influences appetite and how your body responds to calories.
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People with certain variants may feel hungrier, crave higher calorie foods, or struggle more with weight management, even if their thyroid labs look perfect.
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Here's the bottom line.
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These genes don't determine your destiny, but they do explain why some people feel sick, stressed, or stuck despite normal labs.
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And once you know what your blueprint looks like, you can finally stop guessing and start making choices that fit you.
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This is where Dr.
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Gillis's research becomes so important.
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It showed us fibromyalgia isn't imaginary.
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It has a biological fingerprint.
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That alone changes story for millions of people.
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But fibromalgia isn't the only condition with this pattern.
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Let's talk about a few others.
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There's chronic fatigue syndrome.
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Patients live with unrelenting exhaustion that no amount of sleep can fix.
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For years they were told to just exercise more or see a psychiatrist.
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Now research shows mitochondrial dysfunction.
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Their cells literally can't make energy efficiently.
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There's also evidence of immune system abnormalities that keep the body in a state of chronic inflammation.
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But because standard labs don't measure mitochondrial health, patients were dismissed.
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Then there is interstitial cystitis, or IC.
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This is a painful bladder condition that makes people feel like they need to urinate constantly, sometimes every 10 minutes, with severe pelvic pain.
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Many patients, mostly women, are misdiagnosed with recurring urinary tract infections.
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Dr.
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Gillis shared research showing that up to 80% of IC patients share the same immune abnormalities found in fibromyalgia.
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Again, invisible on standard tests, but very real in lived experience.
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Then there's long COVID.
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This is a new frontier.
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Millions are still experiencing fatigue, brain fog, and shortness of breath months after infection.
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Yet their labs and imaging often look normal.
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Early studies in Nature and Lancet suggest viral infections can trigger long-term immune dysfunction and even alter gene expression.
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This is strikingly similar to what we see in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.
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Patients with long COVID are now walking the same road fibromyalgia patients walked for decades, dismissed because the right test didn't exist yet.
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And let's not forget gender bias.
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Research published in Pain Research and Management found that women's pain is consistently underestimated by physicians compared to men's.
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Combine that bias with conditions like fibromyalgia, IC, and chronic fatigue, which disproportionately affect women, and you get a double dismissal.
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First, because of labs are normal.
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Second, because of gender stereotypes around pain.
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Here's what all this means.
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Invisible illnesses aren't imaginary.
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There are biological conditions that require us to look deeper at the immune system, at DNA, at the microbiome.
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And the more we connect these dots, the more we move from stigma to science, from dismissal to diagnosis, and from silence to solutions.
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Okay.
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So what can you take from this conversation?
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First, validate your experience.
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If your body is telling you something is wrong, believe it.
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Symptoms are signals, not weaknesses.
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Second, look beneath the surface.
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Normal labs don't mean everything is fine.
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Ask, could this be genetic, nutritional, or immune-related?
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And last, seek precision, not guesswork.
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DNA testing and nutrigenomics can help identify what your body actually needs.
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Whether that's the right form of B vitamins, targeted stress support, or strategies for better sleep.
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You don't have to live in limbo.
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There are ways to move forward once you understand your blueprint.
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So here's a takeaway, friend.
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Just as Dr.
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Gillis proved fibromyalgia has a measurable biological fingerprint, your DNA holds measurable clues to your own health story.
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If you've ever been dismissed, told your pain isn't real, or been left frustrated by normal labs, it doesn't mean you're broken.
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It means we haven't been looking in the right place.
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If this episode spoke to you, I'd love to help you uncover your own genetic blueprint.
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You can schedule a consultation with me at thelifebalance.com.
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That's t-h e l-y-f e balance.com.
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The link is in the show notes as well.
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Together we'll design a plan that works with your DNA, not against it.
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And please share this episode with someone who's been told it's all in their head.
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Sometimes validation is a first step to transformation.
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Thank you for joining me today, friend.
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Talk to you next Friday.
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Until then, always remember to raise the script on health because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.