Why symptoms return after diet changes, supplements, or hormone treatment
How chronic stress shifts your body into survival mode, suppresses hormone function, and makes new protocols backfire & how to restore the hierarchy.
You know when your chronic symptoms appear out of nowhere again after “being good” for a few months or weeks? And then old or new symptoms pop up?
And when that happens… we go harder.
More extremes.
More rules.
More supplements.
More restriction in all aspects.
Sounds counterintuitive, right?
But here’s what’s actually happening.
Take a recent client of mine, lets call her Devin, who has been trying to have a baby for 7 years. She was diagnosed with PCOS about 10ish years ago, but didnt think anything of it, well because she wasn’t trying to have a baby. Her and her husband have done every test and lab under the sun. She was going to a fertility clinic that put her on Letrozole (a fertility medication by reducing estrogen levels) & Gonal F (fertility injection medication helping stimulate ovaries by creating follicular stimulating hormone aka FSH).
That same fertility clinic told her to overhaul her life practically over night by reducing toxins in her home. No more of the Tide detergent, no more of the green dish soap, no more perfumes etc etc. She did it. 5 months into low tox life and medications. She then was told to probably go on Keto/ Mediterranean diet because its been proven to help fertility. Her gut instinct said no and maybe she should talk to another professional.
I was the other professional.
What Devin didn’t know was that Her HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral analysis) would show she has dangerously low copper which is crucial in ovulation which then puts a big burden on her thyroid, blood glucose, liver glucose, and then eventually on her ovaries which is also ironically where her PCOS is also coming from. Love when the HTMA shows root cause in such a simple and whole body way.
What Devin also didn’t know was that I just read Isaiah chapter 40 verse 12.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?
Like many of my clients, Devin is a poster child of being a perfectionists, type A, from childhood and being high achieving. I see myself in many of my clients and could be the cause of why I felt that if I didn’t write about what I’m about to say, I will explode because this will change how you look at symptoms…forever.
Being able to reproduce is a primitive mammalian function.
When the body stops prioritizing it, that means it’s reallocating resources elsewhere.
Devin’s body ha been answering exactly to the long term stress her body has been in.
you see, Devin had been eating healthy long before PCOS. She understood consistency.
What she struggled with was consistency without intensity. The moment symptoms flare, perfectionists go harder.
in Isaiah, he was actually talking about a scientific word we probably learned in 3 or 4th grade science class, Isostasy. Its the scientific explanation of how there is always an equilibrium in all things on earth and earths crust. So the tectonic plates that cause earthquakes. Tornadoes, hurricanes. Spring temps for 3 weeks just to have it snow 80cm the next week.
Isotasis (the human biology version of Isotasy) describes the body’s ability to maintain dynamic internal stability while constantly adapting to stressors. It’s similar to homeostasis, but a broader umbrella. Homeostasis is about keeping things within range (like blood sugar or temperature). Isotasis includes that + also emphasizes the body’s intelligent, adaptive capacity to shift resources in order to survive and stay functional.
It’s the reason you can:
Skip sleep and still function (for a while)
Undereat or skip meals and still produce energy (Metabolic flexibility)
Be stressed and still digest (though not optimally)
The body will always prioritize survival over optimal performance.
Lets go back to Devin. Being able to reproduce is a primitive, active form of being a mammal. When our bodys are not able to do a very basic function, it means the body is prioritizing something else. Her body is able to have a baby naturally, like physically capable because she has her ovaries. See our body is in CONSTANT calculation of what to do at all times. It sounds very tiring, but its the body’s job. Different parts get to rest while others work, and some systems need more effort while others just do its own things. But what we’ve been taught for generations is symptoms mean that the body is doing something wrong. Which is the same mindset that we view so many of the responses to weather, climate, animal extinctions as a bad thing. Dont get me wrong, we are suffering. But Isotasis teaches us to suffer for the greater good of ultimately, KEEPING MAMMALS and its cycles Alive.
Above all else, Protect 1st, reproduce later.
Devin has been eating healthy before she ever had PCOS, she was a professional horseback rider that did races as well. She knew what it mean to be consistent, to know how her decisions effected her horse and vice versa. What she had a hard time with was being consistent WITHOUT intensity.
On our Interpretation call she specifically told me that “I will do whatever it takes to get pregnant, I just don’t want to do IVF or any of that”.
I took a moment and responded “But the cure cannot be worse than the disease". Her body was so overwhelmed that the medications and 15 supplements she was taking wasn’t going to do what it was called to do in the 1st place, because the body is keeping other cycles well enough for her to live. Her adrenals were shot, her thyroid is struggling, she had a calcium shell which put her in danger of gallstones, her low stomach acid makes nutrients so difficult to be absorbed and used as they should be, and her liver is in high burden that she is at risk soon to develop NAFLD.
Had she gone a high fat diet, like her fertility clinic had recommended, she would be in a full flare up of possible either gallstones or NAFLD. Something that would of demolished her moral. Can you imagine 7 years of being in an infertility journey, doing all the right things, just to end up with MORE chronic symptoms and diagnosis? This is why I had to talk about this, becase many have this happen but cannot pinpoint where things went “wrong”.
The cure cannot be worse than the disease. So how do we get out of the perpetual cycle then?
I introduce you to Allostasis. Stability achieved through adaptive physiological change under stress. Key words: Stability & under stress.
Part of me still wants to argue or come up with something more massive with how simple this is.
You’re telling me that after years of pushing, tracking, supplement stacking, Googling, optimizing… the answer is meals every few hours, cooked vegetables, salt on my food, in bed by 10:30, and a ten-minute walk after dinner? That this is what recalibrates a system that’s been in fight-or-flight for almost a decade?
It feels almost insulting in its simplicity. I know.
But then I look closer.
When she eats within 60–90 minutes of waking and stops going longer than five hours without food, her body stops bracing for famine. I even told her at breakfast have a pop-tart if that’s what you got right now, but please, eat a breakfast. We can iron out the details later.
Quick detour- Famine is one of the loudest alarms that go off in our body’s because famine was the number 1 killer since man kind was created. Its simultaneously why weight loss isn’t just a “calorie in and calories out”. So famine and keeping our body in a malnourished state is the most foundational grounds for chronic illnesses & diseases.
Every main meal will plate carry real quality protein (not quantity) and potassium from potatoes, squash, spinach, bananas, her blood sugar steadies and her adrenals don’t have to overperform just to keep her upright.
When vegetables are cooked, broth is added, and she actually chews instead of multitasking, digestion stops being a battlefield and starts becoming a place of absorption and peace.
When she dims the lights, puts the phone down, walks after meals instead of crushing herself with HIIT, and writes her worries on paper before bed, cortisol softens its grip.
And when the luteal phase is protected instead of pushed through, progesterone no longer has to compete with survival signals aka help to signal to her ovaries its safe to ovulate.
But allostasis doesn’t demand drama. It responds to rhythm. It responds to predictability. It responds to safety repeated daily until the body knows it.
And maybe that’s the hardest part to accept. After all the extremes, what rebuilds adaptation is consistency without intensity. Instead of forcing hormones, we are reallocating resources back toward reproduction by systematically decreasing threat perception and rebuilding mineral and metabolic resilience.
We think healing requires intensity because intensity feels productive. It gives us the illusion of control. If I just try harder, restrict more, optimize better, surely my body will comply.
But the body is not persuaded by pressure. As we see with Devin, as I saw with my own journey, and as you see it with yours. And maybe you knew that, but you needed the repetition and safety to explore it further.
Devin did not need more stimulation. She needed less threat. She did not need to override her ovaries. She needed to tell her nervous system that the war was over.
Allostasis is not sexy. It does not sell headlines. It does not look like biohacking or heroic discipline.
It looks like eating before you are ravenous.
It looks like sleeping before you are shattered.
It looks like walking instead of punishing.
It looks like salt on your potatoes and lights dimmed at night.
And done tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next.
Our bodies would never win an Oscar, because its not acting, its more of a Mathematician mixed in with knowing about 600 different languages and dialogues all happening at the same time. And like Devin, she came to me to help her translate.
Protect first. Reproduce later.
This is not about fertility. It is about hierarchy.
Every system in your body has an order of operations.
Survival sits at the top. & always will.
When you stop escalating the stress response in the name of healing, you stop asking your body to perform under threat.
You begin asking it to trust.
And trust, biologically speaking, is built through repetition.
Not intensity.
Not fear.
Not perfection.
Repetition.
The cure cannot be worse than the disease.
And sometimes the most radical thing a high-achieving, Type A woman can do…
is stop being intense, and let consistency do its work.
Isostasy (Earth crust) + Isotasis (Biology) + Allostasis (Stability in chaos) = Sustainable healing
Rest, but don’t quit
-Geta Barbu| Gut health practitioner & Certified Nutritionist specializing in Chronic illnesses
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