Hey Reader,

A lot of people come to me with symptoms that conventional medical doctors have no good answers for.

Chronic sinusitis? Throw a decongestant and some Advil at it.

Migraines? Let's put you on birth control, caffeine pills, and prescription pain medications to see if anything changes.

Anxiety and insomnia? No problem. There are drugs to numb those feelings and knock you out.

Of course I'm being facetious. Pharmaceuticals can be life-saving, and you will often hear me singing modern medicine's praises. But conventional western medicine also falls short in some critical ways. As a result, millions of people are left taking multiple pills every day to cover up and manage their symptoms, when ideally they'd be working together with their doctors to figure out where those symptoms are coming from in the first place so they can heal from the roots up.

I'll admit, I do a bit of covering up myself, and there's nothing wrong with seeking relief when you're uncomfortable.

But if you want to heal the root cause of your issues—and reduce the number and severity of the symptoms that show up for you—then you're going to have to do some digging.

And this is where holistic medicine practitioners can be especially helpful.

When patients come to me with persistent symptoms, I always start by asking questions about their diet, sleep, lifestyle, environment, chronic stress and trauma.

This information, when combined with symptom presentation, can illuminate patterns of imbalance that are more obvious from a holistic framework than the reductionist lens conventional doctors are trained in.

Can you guess one of the biggest, hidden-in-plain sight causative factors for many symptoms?

Food sensitivities.

A lot of my patients are surprised to discover that they have hidden food sensitivities.

This is because it can take a few days for food-sensitivity symptoms to show up, and the effects are often cumulative, so people can go their whole lives without knowing they have an issue. But when you eat too much of a food that you're sensitive to, your body ends up in a chronic state of low-grade inflammation which can result in a whole host of uncomfortable symptoms.

If you eliminate those foods that you're sensitive to for a while, and also take proactive steps to heal your gut, the inflammation subsides, symptoms stop flaring, and eventually most people find that they're able to eat the foods they're sensitive to in moderation without any issues at all.

But before you can make informed choices, you have to figure out which foods you're sensitive to.

And while some foods are universally inflammatory (like ultra-processed foods and white sugar,) there are also some food-groups that are very healthy for many while they make other people sick.

Want to figure out which foods you're sensitive to?

I'll be blunt, it's going to take a bit of work.

Unfortunately, there aren't any reliable lab tests to diagnose food sensitivities, so the best way to figure out which foods you need to be careful around is by doing an experiment on yourself called an "Elimination Diet".

If you'd like to learn more about hidden food sensitivities, common symptoms that tell you you might have one, and how to do an elimination diet, you can read more here.

And if you have any questions or would like some professional support as you embark on this journey, email me anytime: hello@KaterinaBaratta.com

I can't wait to see where this takes you!

Warmly,

Katerina