About Me

My mission

The mission of Your Balanced Health Solution is to help people who want to overcome their chronic conditions reach their goals by guiding them to wellness by balancing the mental, spiritual and physical aspects of their being.

How I got into coaching

No, my husband and I don't ride cycle in the snow! We were looking at motorcycles and dreaming of warm weather and SUMMER! After dealing with snow and cold for at least five to six months in the winter in Minnesota, you get the "bug" to do something FUN outside in WARM, SUNNY weather! It's like the cold battle you feel in dealing with a chronic condition, like it will never end. You keep waiting for spring and summer to arrive. We bought a 2006 Victory Kingpin Deluxe 1634cc and put on about 5,000 miles last summer. We rode for the Patriot Guard and for charities like Habitat for Humanity.

For 23 years my husband, David, and I had our different health challenges.

David constantly battled joint pain from old football injuries that felt like a toothache in his knees. He’d know when it was going to rain when the pain got worse. His family had a history of joint pain so living with the constant ache was something he was familiar with and it just seemed “normal”.

He’d had surgery to remove the meniscus on one knee and many times over the years had to go in to have the fluid taken off. Prescriptions didn’t seem to do much for the pain. He did find some relief in some natural glucosamine pills but had resigned himself to the fact of always having pain.

David also constantly struggled with his weight. And that, of course, didn’t help the joint issues in his knees either. He tried many kinds of diets of his own design that never seemed to really work.

In 1991, while uncovering the plastic in a corn silo (we were dairy farmers, I know, that wasn’t great for the knees either) he inhaled and ingested a LOT of black corn mold.

When he came down he was disoriented and coughing.

That started our MEDICAL-GO-ROUND experience.

Over the next 13 years he developed swollen, sore feet and ankles, red patches wherever he sweat, he coughed and cleared his throat of phlegm every 15 to 20 minutes and had a problem with ED. He started having pre-hypertension. And the pain in his joints got worse.

His loud snoring became a marital and family problem. Sometimes I slept on the couch. Sometimes he did. You could hear his snoring from every room in the house and even the guys at deer camp threw rolled up socks at him to try to stop the noise. That’s when he knew his snoring was bad.

At night he would stop breathing and gasp for air. That scared me to death! I would always jump at the sound. It was determined he had severe obstructive sleep apnea by having a sleep test done at the local hospital.  He had 73 episodes (skipping one or more breaths) an hour while he slept.  The sleep apnea and snoring was so awful it was affecting our relationship as we started to sleep in separate rooms.

We went to the doctors. And we went back…and back…and back. One of the antibiotics that was prescribed for David’s cough caused him to have pain in his hip which he then had for years. It was an experimental drug that was pulled off of the market about 3 months after David quit taking it. But it had left it’s mark on his body and didn’t eliminate the cough.

My issues had been digestive related and something I thought was genetic and had to just cope with. It affected my choice of foods and distance from restrooms. I took a risk of being embarrassed every time we ate out, which made the whole experience less enjoyable.

Sometimes I would end up on our bathroom floor in cold sweats from the pain. I could never pinpoint what the trigger was and neither could conventional medicine.

Where were the answers to our many health questions?

I was determined to look for answers instead of relying on what we were being told by medical professionals. We were told “You’re getting older, you’ll just have to accept it”, “There’s nothing more we can do, you’ll just have to deal with it”, “Well, we can try this prescription and if that doesn’t do anything we can try another prescription.” These statements were no longer acceptable answers for me. Besides, have you really looked at the side effects of prescription medicines?  I mean really looked?  Have you experienced side effects that added to the problem or have been given additional medicine to help symptoms that a previous prescription has caused?

Prescription medicines cover up warnings that your body is giving you telling you that something is wrong. They do not address what is causing the problem.

Even so, David was willing to accept their advice. After all, we were now approaching our 50’s. I told David that it was not normal to wake up numerous times in a night. He’d reply, “But it’s normal for me.” Well, what’s normal isn’t necessarily natural. A CPAP mask or surgery were the medical recommendations but, were not fixes, they were patches because neither remedy really address the cause.  And certainly prescription medicines are patches.

I kept searching. Truly there had to be an answer. But we weren’t getting any solutions from conventional medicine only a continual revolving door.

Then, I came across a book that had a two week “experiment”. No processed food, nothing refined or white, nothing artificial, nothing overly sweet, just real food for two weeks. My husband, always skeptical, thought I was off the wall for suggesting we try this natural approach to address our many health issues. David already thought we were eating “healthy”. This seemed ridiculous!

But, if we were going to try this diet he wanted to do it “all the way”.

Could it really be this SIMPLE?

How could something so simple be so difficult? Reducing or eliminating foods that we had been eating for years was hard. But, we kept coming back to the phrase, “It’s only two weeks out of our lives. We can do this”.

And we did.

We stuck by the protocol to the letter. What we had discovered at the end of these two weeks was unbelievable! How could something this simple be so profound?

By following the book’s advice, my health concerns, that I thought were inherited and couldn’t be resolved, were gone! I thought it was a life changing experience to enjoy a meal and not worry later about how I was going to be affected.

David was now able to sleep through the night with mild snoring, no gasping for air, no rashes, no cough, no sore feet, and the pain in his joints were greatly reduced!!

Dave and I have fun traveling and attending many events together; business conferences, marketing seminars, charity events. We love to experience and learn new things. Leaving home and traveling wasn't always pleasurable. I often had to be careful what I ate and worry about knowing where the closest restroom was. Nights in hotels were horrendous. Dave's snoring and sleep apnea drove the family out of the room. I would end up sleeping in the hotel room's bathroom or Dave would go to the lobby or out to the car to sleep. We now look forward to travelling together.

My husband was a believer and I was simply in awe.

We had gotten our lives and our relationship back!!

In general, we had discovered just how important good nutrition is to the body and to health.

Now, I really dug in and did a mountain load of research. I took an anatomy and physiology class. I read tons of books and searched the internet. Why did the right fuel have such an impact on our health?

I found out, it’s like putting the wrong fuel in your car. The car will not run smoothly or at all if you put incorrect or poor quality fuel in the tank. If you continually put the wrong fuel in the tank you will be going to the repair shop. Again…and again…and again.

My question was, why weren’t doctors using the nutritional approach to overcome our health challenges? After all, if the medical experts knew it was that simple, why wouldn’t they tell you?

Well, doctors know how to practice medicine but they don’t know nutrition. The average doctor spends about 10,000 hours in the classroom to become a doctor, but, they spend about 8 hours on nutrition.

With nutrition, the answer is simple- the body finds balance with the right fuel. The answer was so easy to find but it required something difficult - a willingness to take control of your own health, commit to change and try something that conventional medicine wasn’t suggesting.

I decided I could help many other people with this information.  The obstacle for some people, though, is putting the information into action.  Step by step, day to day, action.  If the answer was just having the knowledge, then we all could be healthy.  Health information abounds.

That’s why I decided to become a health coach; to help people put the right information into action and find success in reaching their health goals.

My personal values, beliefs and philosophy

I believe that wellness involves the whole person, body, mind and spirit. That’s why when you’re stressed you get a stomach ache or headache. When you have an injury you can get depressed. Health not only involves what you eat or drink but also what you see, read and hear. You’re thoughts can limit what you can achieve because it limits the actions that you take. I incorporate Biblical resources into my coaching because it renews and strengthens Christian mindset that may have gotten weakened with time and trials.

Education/Training/Schools/Associations and Credentials

Graduate of Health Coach training - Hilton Johnson Productions, Inc.

General Membership – American Holistic Health Association

Certified Maximized Living Mentor - Dr. Ben Lerner, Body by God: The Owner’s Manual For Maximized Living

Hobbies and passion

Travel, hosting exchange students/adults, dancing, motorcycling, Patriot Guard Riders, sundry crafts, flower gardening,

I am a grandparent, married for 32 years, have one son, an Army National Guard soldier and one daughter, (and maybe obvious) a Christian.