Not All Health Advice Is Created Equal: Why Your Provider's Credentials Actually Matter
You found someone online, maybe on Instagram, maybe in a Facebook group, who seems to really get it. They talk about hormones, adrenal fatigue, cortisol, gut health. They offer programs, recommend supplements, maybe even review your labs. And for a moment, it feels like someone is finally listening.
That feeling is real. But there's something worth understanding about who's on the other side of that advice.
The wellness space is full of people who sound clinical
Health coaching has grown into a massive industry, and many coaches are genuinely passionate about helping people. But passion and clinical training are not the same thing.
A health coach is not licensed to diagnose, prescribe, or treat. They have not completed years of clinical rotations. They have not managed patients with complex, overlapping conditions. They have not studied pharmacology, abnormal lab interpretation, or how to safely taper a medication. Most have not sat with a patient whose labs came back outside of normal range and had to make a clinical call in real time.
That's not a criticism, it's a scope of practice distinction. And when it comes to your hormones, your metabolic health, or your thyroid, scope of practice matters.
What clinical training actually gives you
As a board certified Family Nurse Practitioner with additional functional medicine certification, I didn't learn how to read labs from a course I took online. I learned by seeing patients, hundreds of them, over years of clinical practice. I learned what a pattern of abnormals looks like on paper, and what it looks like in a real person sitting in front of me.
I learned to ask: Is this thyroid result low because of a conversion issue, or because of something inflammatory driving it? Is this progesterone level truly low, or is it low because the blood draw wasn't timed correctly in the luteal phase? Is this woman's fatigue metabolic, hormonal, or is something else going on that we need to rule out first?
These are not questions a supplement protocol can answer. They require clinical judgment that develops over time, not weeks, but years.
Labs are not a DIY project
One of the things I see often: women who have ordered their own labs through a direct-to-consumer service, gotten results back, and then tried to interpret them on their own — or handed them to someone without the training to do it properly.
Abnormal lab values don't exist in isolation. Context matters. Timing matters. Your symptoms, your history, what else is going on in your body — all of it matters. A number outside of range isn't automatically a problem, and a number inside of range isn't automatically a pass. Knowing the difference is the clinical piece.
The same goes for supplements. What looks like a helpful protocol on the surface can be contraindicated depending on what's going on with your thyroid, your liver, your hormones. More is not better when it's not targeted.
You deserve someone who can actually treat you
This isn't about gatekeeping wellness. It's about making sure the person guiding your care has the training to do it safely.
At Rooted, I'm not just interpreting your labs, I'm synthesizing your full clinical picture, ordering additional workup when it's warranted, and creating a plan that accounts for how your hormonal, metabolic, and thyroid systems interact. When something is outside of normal, I know what to do with it.
If you've been piecing things together on your own and it's not adding up, that's not a failure on your part. It's a signal that you might need a different kind of support, one that starts with someone who is qualified to look at the whole picture.
Ready for care that goes deeper?
Rooted Functional Medicine | Virtual care for women in VA + DC