Today’s Mold Talks guest is Courtney Otten, an Integrative Health Practitioner, Primal Health Coach, Registered Yoga Teacher, and group fitness instructor. She’s dedicated to helping navigate people through their own long-lasting digestive issues so they can live their healthiest lives.
She focuses on helping people realize that prioritizing health doesn’t have to be so scary and sticking to a diet that helps your health doesn’t have to be restrictive or hard. This is why she created Rooted in Health, to help others fix their gut through her health coaching services, to make healthy eating easy with her recipes, and to help others feel a little less alone in their health struggles.
Our chat touches on Courtney’s personal experience with mold, how long it took to understand the root cause of her issues, the relationship between her Candida problem and mold problem, and how her mold journey ultimately changed her life.
Today’s Talk:
When Courtney graduated college, she lived in a small one-bedroom apartment on the third floor. She’d been dealing with digestive issues for a while, including persistent Candida flare-ups that would return even after cleanses.
When her apartment sprung a leak, she started considering whether mold might be her problem. The landlords assured her that the leak was fixed and nothing was wrong, but the signs all pointed towards mold. Luckily, she had a friend that invited her to move in so she packed up her belongings and moved out. She considered testing her old apartment but decided to save the money for her wellness journey instead.
Over the years, she went to traditional MD’s, dermatologists, and holistic doctors but it still took ages for her diagnosis. They all kept saying “fix your gut” or “take this topical cream” for her rashes, but not looking into what could be causing them in the first place.
“It was hard when no one can give you any answers. It gets so hard.”
She considers herself lucky to have even had the rash in the first place, even though it made her absolutely miserable. At least that way, she said, her illness was visible. Chronic fatigue, on the other hand, is much more difficult to explain.
Quarantine ended up being her biggest push to wellness. Her fatigue finally caught up with her and she crashed. She counts that time period as a blessing though- she was able to work from home but also spend time researching, learning, and focusing on getting better.
Healing took her months time though. It wasn’t just a quick easy fix. But she knew that,
“Every single day was one bad day behind me and one day closer to healing.”
Her experience with mold also changed the path of her career. After so much research, she realized she could use her knowledge and her experience to help guide others towards their own personal healing.
“I know how lonely it gets and I know how hard it gets.”
With her experience, she became an Integrative Health Practitioner and helps people find the root cause of their issue, not just a bandaid to fix the problem.
