The Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition

What if a diagnosis could explain your symptoms without defining your future? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with Dr. Sierra Bains, Doctor of Physical Therapy, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, best-selling author of Rooted, and founder of Lightstyle, for a powerful conversation about Multiple Sclerosis, root cause healing, nervous system health, chronic stress, and functional health. Sierra shares the story of being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at 24 while completing her doctorate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being a competitive bodybuilder who closely tracked her nutrition, sleep, movement, and health metrics, she...

What happens when weight loss becomes about more than the number on the scale? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with FDNP Brandy Buskow for an honest conversation about GLP-1 medications, obesity, metabolic health, gut health, weight loss, and the role of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioners in supporting clients through this changing health landscape. Brandy shares her personal journey with lifelong obesity, severe IBS, anxiety, digestive issues, and years of trying diets and other approaches to lose weight. After discovering Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and improving many aspects of her health, she...

What if lasting physical healing requires more than changing what you eat or taking another supplement? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with Amber Romaniuk, an emotional eating, digestive, and hormone expert, to explore the powerful connection between mindset, self-worth, emotional healing, nervous system regulation, gut health, hormone health, and physical wellbeing. Amber shares her deeply personal health transformation, including her experiences with food addiction, binge eating, bulimia, emotional eating, body image struggles, self-sabotage, and tying her self-worth to her weight and appearance. She explains how years of negative...

GLP-1 medications and peptide therapy are everywhere right now, but are they simply weight loss tools, or is there more to the conversation? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with holistic health practitioner Laura Young to discuss GLP-1s, peptide therapy, metabolic health, food noise, inflammation, healthy aging, and the importance of building strong health foundations first. Laura shares her own experience using GLP-1 peptides after struggling with metabolic changes following pregnancy, including how reducing food noise changed her relationship with hunger and helped support her weight loss goals.<...

What are the real benefits of red light therapy and infrared saunas, and how could infrared therapy support detoxification, inflammation, pain, recovery, and overall cellular health? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with Robby Besner, Chief Science Officer and co-founder of Therasage, whose work with infrared technology began after his teenage daughter was diagnosed with Lyme disease. Robby shares his daughter’s Lyme disease journey, the limitations they experienced with conventional treatment, and why he began researching infrared therapy as another way to support her quality of life. ...

What if you’ve spent years being told that everything is “normal,” while your body is telling you something completely different? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with Chandra Marin, a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, to explore her decades-long journey with chronic symptoms, digestive dysfunction, brain fog, anxiety, fatigue, and unexplained health challenges. Chandra’s story began in her teens with severe constipation, episodes of passing out, chronic headaches, painful periods, and a feeling that her metabolism simply wasn’t working like everyone else’s. After contracting West Nile virus, her e...

What if sustainable weight loss isn't about eating less, but about fixing what's happening beneath the surface? In this inspiring episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner (FDN-P) Lori Balue shares how she transformed her health after decades of obesity, Metabolic Dysfunction, PCOS, Prediabetes, Depression, Anxiety, Chronic Inflammation, asthma, and failed dieting. Despite trying countless calorie-restricted diets, lasting results only came after addressing the hidden stressors driving her body's dysfunction. Lori explains how Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, Functional Lab Testing, and a Root Cause Healing approach helped uncover the underlying factors affecting her...

In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with recent FDN graduate Jaime Dadd to unpack what a GI Map test finally revealed after a lifetime of guessing: H. pylori, low pancreatic elastase, bacterial overgrowth, and gut inflammation that had likely been building since her teenage years. In this episode: Why bloating and gas on a clean diet almost always point somewhere deeper than food What low stomach acid looks like decades before anyone connects the dots How ten rounds of antibiotics for recurring mastitis reshaped her gut ...

What happens when every medical test comes back "normal," yet your body is telling you something is seriously wrong? In this powerful episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner (FDN Practitioner) Betsy Stevenson shares her remarkable journey through years of unexplained neurological symptoms that mimicked mini-strokes, debilitating fatigue, digestive dysfunction, insomnia, hormone imbalance, and overwhelming burnout. Despite extensive medical testing, including MRIs, heart evaluations, CT scans, blood work, and specialist visits, she was repeatedly told everything looked normal. Everything changed when Functional Lab Testing revealed profound HPA Axis dysfunction, extremely low cortisol...

Why do so many women continue battling fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, hormone imbalance, bloating, and food sensitivities, even when their lab results come back “normal”? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with Dr. Stephanie Dunlop, a board-certified emergency medicine physician and founder of RootRX, to explore why conventional medicine often overlooks early dysfunction and how a root cause approach can uncover the hidden patterns behind persistent symptoms. After experiencing her own unexplained postpartum health crisis and repeatedly being told that everything was "normal," Dr. Dunlop began searching beyond conv...

In this special episode of the Health Detective Podcast, FDN Founder Reed Davis shares the remarkable story behind the creation of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN) and explains how a passion for helping people evolved into one of the world's leading Functional Health and Health Coaching education programs. Reed reflects on his transition from environmental law into the wellness field after witnessing firsthand how conventional healthcare often failed to uncover the true causes of chronic health problems. Through years of working alongside chiropractors, nutrition professionals, and medical mentors, he developed a practical, data-driven system focused on identifying Hidden...

What if one unexpected event, a partnership ending, a pandemic, a health crisis, or losing a major client could completely disrupt your business? More importantly, how do you build a health coaching business that can survive every setback? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet shares the real business journey behind building a resilient Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practice. From launching a personal training studio at age 22 to navigating failed partnerships, COVID shutdowns, personal health struggles, pregnancy, and unexpected client loss, Michele explains how every challenge became an opportunity to build a stronger business. <...

How do you help someone whose chronic bloating, abdominal distension, digestive issues, hormone imbalance, and fatigue keep returning, even after working with multiple practitioners? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with FDN Practitioner Becca Chilczenkowski, co-owner of FitMom Functional Health, to break down one of her most complex Functional Diagnostic Nutrition case studies. Together, they explore how a woman struggling with severe bloating, recurring H. pylori, parasites, reflux, constipation, dermatitis, fibroids, weight gain, exhaustion, and hormone challenges finally experienced lasting Health Transformation through a layered, whole-body approach. Rather than chasing symptoms...

If you have lived with acid reflux, heartburn, bloating, or stomach pain that will not go away, even after PPIs, elimination diets, and round after round of doctor visits, this conversation is for you. For over five years, Jessica Washington cycled through the ER, a PPI, a SIBO label, and increasingly restrictive diets, with no real answers. Her H. pylori test even came back negative, something that happens far more often than most people are told. Everything changed when she ran functional labs with a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner and finally saw what was driving her symptoms.<...

Is Functional Medicine truly addressing the root causes of Chronic Illness or has it started falling into the same symptom-focused patterns as conventional healthcare? In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with Reed Davis, founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN), to explore the philosophy, principles, and clinical framework that have helped thousands of practitioners and clients uncover the hidden stressors behind chronic health challenges. Drawing on nearly three decades of experience, Reed shares how FDN was created to focus on Root Cause Healing rather than diagnoses, symptoms, or condition-specific protocols...

Most FDN trainees believe they need to wait until they graduate before they can start getting clients. According to Jenn Malecha, that's one of the biggest mistakes new practitioners make. In this episode of the Health Detective Podcast, Michele Scarlet sits down with Jenn Malecha to reveal how FDN Practitioners, Health Coaches, and Functional Health Practitioners can begin building a client waitlist long before certification is complete. One of the most common fears among new practitioners is not knowing where their first clients will come from. Jenn breaks down a practical, step-by-step approach to building...

Michele Scarlet sits down with RN, Nurse Practitioner, and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner Connie Wade for an honest conversation about what 25 years inside the emergency room taught her about the limits of conventional medicine, why her own doctor told her she was not "sick enough" to treat, and how she finally healed the symptoms she had been "swiping away" for years. In this powerful Health Detective Podcast episode, Connie shares her personal journey through psoriasis, debilitating joint pain at 48, chronic reflux, daily ibuprofen use, estrogen dominance, heavy painful periods, more than 20 years of night shift, H. pylori...

You've cleaned up your diet. You're taking the supplements. You've run the labs. You've done the protocols. And you're still tired, bloated, anxious, and burnt out, wondering what the heck you're missing. If that's you, this episode is the one. Michele Scarlet sits down with Sarah Ball, founder of Hormone Goddess and creator of the Hormone Goddess Method, for a vulnerable, story-driven conversation about burnout, cellular energy, and what's really going on for high-functioning women who feel like they're doing everything right and still not getting results. Sarah shares her own healing journey...

If you have been struggling with IBS, anxiety, burnout, or unexplained symptoms and feel like conventional medicine keeps letting you down, this episode is for you. And if you are a health coach or aspiring functional medicine practitioner who wants to build a practice with real time freedom and financial freedom, keep reading because this one covers both. This week on the Health Detective Podcast, how one woman went from burnt out corporate executive to running a thriving functional medicine practice helping over 500 women around the world. In this episode you will learn: → Ho...

Women don’t randomly develop bloating, food sensitivities, rosacea, eczema, hormone issues, and chronic inflammation overnight. But most are never told how connected these symptoms actually are. In this episode, Michele Scarlet sits down with Elizabeth Aylor to unpack her personal health transformation after years of severe gut dysfunction, histamine intolerance, hormone imbalance, skin flare-ups, food reactions, and losing her cycle for over seven years. After trying nearly every diet imaginable; including keto, carnivore, vegan, raw vegan, and strict gut-healing protocols. Nothing truly worked until she stopped chasing symptoms and started addressing the de...