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Remedy Functional Medicine
The root-cause reasons behind midlife fatigue, brain fog and stubborn weight - and the work-up conventional care skips.
Stacy Marie Ronquillo, NP · For women 40-55 who were told their bloodwork is fine.
Where this starts
It isn’t a lab value that brought you here. It’s a thought that shows up around two in the morning — lying there wide awake and exhausted at the same time.
That fear is the thing this hour is built to take apart. Not with a pep talk. With an explanation.
Who this is for
What this hour is
That’s the content, not a teaser. You’ll leave understanding your own labs better than when you logged on — whether or not you ever become a patient.
Who's teaching this
The ER is where I learned what conventional medicine is genuinely excellent at — and where I saw the gap this practice exists to fill.
The pattern
Alone, each of these is easy to explain away as stress, or age, or being a busy mom.
Together, in one person, at this stage of life — they are not a personality. They are a pattern. And a pattern is something you can investigate.
What you were told
“That’s just perimenopause.” · “You’re borderline — let’s recheck in a year.” · “Have you tried eating less and moving more?” · “It’s probably stress.”
Most of the clinicians who said these things are good people working inside a structure that gives them eleven minutes.
But what you heard was: nothing is wrong, so the problem must be me. And then you went quiet about it.
False belief 01
It answers one question: is this person sick enough to need intervention right now? That’s a useful question. It isn’t your question.
“Normal” means: no diagnosable disease on this marker. That’s good news. It is not an answer to why you can’t get through the afternoon.
The mechanism
The reported band is wide. Two people can both be told “normal” while sitting in genuinely different places inside it, feeling genuinely different.
It is not a different lab or a secret test. It is the same number, read against a different question.
The mechanism
A routine visit produces a thin slice. So when you ask “what would you even find?” — the honest answer is: possibly quite a lot, because most of it was never looked at.
Not negligence. Eleven minutes buys a screening panel, and a screening panel is what you got.
False belief 02
Discipline is not your problem. Most of the women who say that sentence to me are, by any reasonable standard, doing more than the people around them who feel fine.
And the self-blame does something worse than feel bad: it keeps you from going back. You just resolve to try harder in January.
The reframe
Keto. Whole30. Fasting. The trainer. The supplements from the podcast. Every one of those was a protocol — and not one had a work-up behind it.
So when it didn’t work, the correct conclusion was never “I failed.” It was: that was a guess, and it was the wrong guess for my physiology.
False belief 03
That’s a fair question, and I’d rather you ask it out loud.
That’s the whole difference. It isn’t mystical. It’s scope and time.
Filling in the gaps
This is what “root cause” means when it isn’t a marketing word: go and look at the categories that explain the pattern, instead of treating the loudest symptom.
The sequence
Most women arrive assuming hormones are the whole story. In my experience the earliest meaningful change tends to come from metabolism, gut and nutrient status.
I tell you the order up front because it’s the honest sequence — and because it’s the part that gets skipped when someone is selling the most exciting-sounding intervention first.
Saying it plainly
Some of you are afraid of being pushed onto hormones you don’t want. Some are afraid of being denied ones you need. Both fears come from the same place: someone deciding before they looked at you.
As a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner, that’s the conversation I’m trained to have properly — including what’s known and what’s genuinely uncertain.
Why 11 minutes
No individual in that system is failing. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do — catch disease at scale, efficiently. It is very good at that.
It was not designed to sit with a 47-year-old woman for ninety minutes and work out why she’s exhausted.
What the work looks like
Continuity isn’t a luxury feature. It’s the mechanism. You can’t connect dots across a system if a different person looks at each dot.
What we're aiming at
This is what the work aims at, not a promise of results. Bodies differ and results differ — be sceptical of anyone in my field who tells you otherwise.
In their words
“She made me feel heard, respected, and that my concerns were valid. I feel like I have a great partner in my health now — a feeling that had been lacking with my previous provider.”
“Her approach to care is incredibly thorough — she never rushes, and she takes the time to truly understand her patients, both clinically and personally.”
“I'm excited to get to the root of health problems rather than just masking symptoms with drugs. The access to shoot off a quick text and actually get a timely, helpful reply is amazing.”
Every one of those is about being heard and having time. Not one is about a supplement.
If you want to do this properly
It’s by application, and not to sound exclusive. Small panels are the whole mechanism — I can only do ninety-minute visits and answer my own messages if I’m not carrying two thousand people.
Your next step
If tonight explained something you’ve been trying to get explained for years — apply. If we’re a fit, we’ll talk properly. If we’re not, I’ll tell you that, and where I’d point you instead.
And if you’re not ready, take one question to whichever provider you already see: “I understand it’s in range — but is it optimal?” It costs nothing and it changes the conversation.
You are not imagining it. Your labs are normal and you’re not fine — both are true, and only one has been taken seriously.