When a woman is dealing with brain fog, gut issues, irritability, and just not feeling like herself… There are usually two paths she ends up taking. The first is the conventional healthcare one. A ten-minute doctor’s visit, a quick look at basic labs, and then a prescription (often including an antidepressant) before being sent on her way.
But here’s the problem: that path never gets to the root cause.
Because when a woman presents with a cluster of symptoms like fatigue, mood changes, gut issues, and low energy, the default diagnosis becomes anxiety or depression.
And for many people we see, that’s not what’s actually going on, there’s a deeper issue that needs to be addressed.
There’s an underlying inflammatory or autoimmune issue, immune dysfunction, or there’s a breakdown happening in the body that hasn’t been identified yet.
And what she’s experiencing aren’t random symptoms; they’re signals.
Traditional healthcare and 10-minute visits aren’t built to uncover complex, multi-system. And you definitely can’t solve them by layering prescriptions on top of symptoms without understanding what’s driving them in the first place.
You need time, context, and someone willing to look at the full picture. And that’s where a root-cause approach changes everything.
Because instead of asking, “How do we manage this symptom?” It starts with a different question: “What’s actually causing this in the first place?”
In this episode, Dr. Sakina Davis, a functional medicine practitioner who specializes in root-cause care, returns to the show. We unpack what’s really happening beneath symptoms like fatigue, gut issues, and brain fog, and why so many women are being misdiagnosed or dismissed in the process.
We get into how autoimmune and inflammatory conditions actually show up, the patterns most doctors miss, and what it looks like to take a more comprehensive approach to testing, diagnosis, and treatment.
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
Labs can look “normal” while your body clearly isn’t
Most standard testing barely scratches the surface. So if everything comes back “fine,” what are doctors not testing for, and what actually reveals inflammation and immune dysfunction?
What a deeper diagnostic actually looks like
From expanded thyroid panels to inflammatory markers and immune testing, what does comprehensive testing really involve, and how do you know when it’s necessary?
Your gut might be the problem, even if digestion seems “fine”
You can be eating well and still not absorbing nutrients properly. What does it mean if your body isn’t breaking down food the way it should—and how would you even know?
The test no one wants to do… but can explain everything
Stool testing sounds unpleasant, but it reveals things that nothing else can, bacteria balance, inflammation, and digestion issues. So what can it actually uncover about your health that other tests miss?
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