quick disclaimer: all the stuff i write about in my adrenal blog posts are relative to my own personal experience and recommendations. what was recommended to and worked for me may not work for you, so please proceed with caution and enlist the help of a naturopathic doctor in your area for the best + safest results! whoa! the last journal entry i wrote was last august (but posted in october 2015). time flies. this blog series is something that has been hanging over my head, and thanks to the amazing management team at sS (shout out to liesse + lacey!), i've finally found the time and space to type all this out, and am dedicated to finishing it! after doing the vitamin and diet regimen as recommended by dr. figoski for 3+ months, i felt less bloated (which is a great thing, don't get me wrong), but for the most part, didn't feel any better. i adhered to the diet very strictly, took all my supplements, yadda yadda yadda and still didn't feel as great as i should have, for all the work i was putting in - still cranky, not able to handle stress well at all, feeling tired and uninspired to work out - i decided to try working with another naturopath. dr. amy day is a naturopathic doctor based out of berkeley, and i first had heard of her in 2013, from our lovely sS'er CS who was referred to us by dr. day. not sure exactly how dr. day found out about us, but over the years, we've referred clients to each other based on reputation and testimonials from our mutual clients. CS had some complicated hormonal issues that dr. day was able to help solve (when no other conventional or alternative doctor could). when i looked up dr. day's credentials on her website, i was particularly impressed to find out that she was the 4th naturopathic doctor to be licensed in california (!) and that she had personally gone through, cured herself of and specialized in women's adrenal fatigue + health. after more poking around, i found her (free) guide called "the busy woman's 2-week recharge", read it and liked what i saw. i particularly enjoyed the straight-forward approach with which she wrote, truly tailored towards the busy woman. in the few follow-up emails sent after downloading the guide, at the top of each email read a line that said "if you're too busy, just read the text in bold, and read the rest when you have time!". i loved that! so after doing some preliminary research, out of desperation and frustration (mostly frustration), i scheduled a phone chat with her to see if she could help me. i very frankly expressed to her that given all the 'natural healthy hippy stuff' i had been doing specifically for the adrenal fatigue in the several months prior with no results, i would be pissed if she made me do the same things. i was super honest and told her that i really wasn't that motivated to work with another ND, and i DID NOT want to do the same exact stuff i had already been doing, because of the lack of results i felt with the last round of work with doctor fig. during our phone chat, i described my daily lifestyle, everything i had been doing as per dr. fig - and since i had written the blog posts about my journey, she actually hopped online to read through all the content and asked me questions while i was on the phone with her. she said that if i hadn't already done all the baseline stuff i had did (food elimination + supplements), she probably would have started me off there - which was fair. but since i had already been through that "first stage" of care, she thought she'd be able to come at my imbalances with a different approach, and decided that working together may be fruitful after all. she sent me some paperwork and access to her secure online appointment scheduling and communication system. (for the record as of october 2015, the cost for the first 3 visits - 90 minute consult + 2 follow-ups - came to about $1k). it came with a money-back guarantee: if after the consult i didn't feel like it was going to be a good fit, she'd pro-rate the package and refund me the portion of the $1k i hadn't used up - something SUPER rare in the alternative health industry, if existent at all. at the in-person consult, we sat, chatted, and she decided to run some different kinds of tests to try and get to the root of the problem. what really interested me though, was the approach she took: she decided to test my body to would find out what was going on with my brain chemicals. GENIUS! it made sense that since i was still feeling super stressed, depressed and anxious even with all the dietary- and vitamin-supplement things i was doing, maybe it was a brain chemical thing. that along with another hormonal-spit test (and i think a couple others) started the road to discovery.. and hopefully healing.