Hollie Sears Wellness

10/12/2026

FOLLOW Hollie Sears, CFNP | Perimenopause + Functional Nutrition for perimenopause advice that doesn’t require you to become the most boring woman alive. 🥤

Not everything needs to be optimized.

Not every drink needs electrolytes.
Not every meal needs 30 grams of protein.
Not every stressful moment needs a cortisol-lowering protocol.

Sometimes you just need 2008 Lil Wayne at an absolutely disrespectful volume, an ice-cold Diet Coke, and 20 minutes where nobody needs a damn thing from you.

You can care about your hormones, prioritize your health, lift weights, eat your vegetables AND enjoy things that aren’t particularly wellness-approved.

Because somewhere along the way, we turned being healthy into another full-time job.

And frankly, I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

Wellness without a personality? Couldn’t be me.

FOLLOW Hollie Sears, CFNP | Perimenopause + Functional Nutrition for evidence-informed perimenopause advice, functional nutrition, and the occasional reminder to loosen the hell up.

10/10/2026

Your cholesterol came back low and nobody said a word about it.

That’s the part most women never hear. The panel gets scanned for high, and low gets read as fine. But cholesterol is the raw material your body builds estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, insulin and thyroid hormone from. Not enough of it and there is less to work with, at exactly the point in life when you need every bit of what you’ve got.

Two things drive it. Either you’re not eating enough fat, or you’re not breaking down and absorbing the fat you do eat. The second one is far more common than anyone realises and it does not show up on a standard panel.

That’s the gut piece. Low stomach acid, sluggish bile flow, pancreatic enzyme output that has quietly dropped off. You can eat the salmon and the olive oil and the eggs and still not be getting what’s in them. Bloating after a rich meal, stools that float, feeling heavy for hours after eating, these are the things women tell me about and then apologise for mentioning.

When I work with a woman, we look at intake and absorption together, because fixing one without the other doesn’t move much. Sometimes that means testing. Sometimes it means starting with how you eat before we touch what you eat.

Optimal numbers are on screen. Save this one and check your last panel.

Comment OPTIMAL and I’ll help you read yours.

This is educational content, not medical advice. Nothing here is intended to diagnose or treat, and it is not a substitute for care from your own doctor.

10/07/2026

Comment OPTIMAL and I’ll show you what I look at when “normal” testing doesn’t match how you actually feel.

A negative H. pylori breath test does not automatically mean the conversation is over.

If you’re dealing with nausea, reflux, burning, indigestion, food sitting heavily in your stomach, low ferritin, low iron or B12 that keeps drifting down, I’m looking at the bigger digestive picture.

Because testing is only as useful as the context around it.

Breath testing can be affected by preparation, medications and timing. And when the symptoms and nutrient patterns are still pointing toward impaired gastric function, I don’t simply shrug because one result says “negative.”

I want to know:

What is happening in the stomach environment?
Are you digesting and absorbing properly?
What does the rest of the gut look like?
Is H. pylori showing up on stool testing?
And most importantly, why has your terrain allowed it to become a problem in the first place?

My goal isn’t simply to “kill a bug.”

It’s to lower problematic levels when appropriate, support the gastric environment, rebuild digestive function and help your gut become more resilient so you can actually digest, absorb and feel well again.

That is a very different strategy from chasing symptoms one at a time.

Comment OPTIMAL if you’re tired of being told everything looks fine when your body is very clearly telling you otherwise.

10/06/2026

10/05/2026

Comment OPTIMAL if you feel like your body has become complicated and you want someone to help you figure out what is actually going on.**

Maybe your sinuses are constantly congested.

Your skin is suddenly reactive.

Histamine seems to be everywhere.

You are foggy, exhausted, headachy, or you wake up feeling weirdly hungover even when you did not drink.

Supplements you used to tolerate suddenly make you feel awful.

And maybe the strangest part is this:

**You feel worse at home, and better when you leave.**

That gets my attention.

Because no, mold is not the answer to every complex health problem.

But if your symptoms started after a move, a leak, water damage, a renovation, or a change in environment, I am not ignoring that clue.

I am also not jumping straight into a giant mold protocol.

I want to know what your bloodwork is showing.

What changed first.

What your immune system is doing.

Whether your symptoms actually fit the pattern.

And whether there is enough evidence to justify testing deeper.

Because you do not need another practitioner throwing supplements at you and hoping something sticks.

And if you are already reactive, going hard on detox can make you feel much worse.

These cases often need to move slowly.

Support your body.

Reduce exposure where possible.

Build tolerance.

Then move things forward.

You are not trying to “detox harder.”

You are trying to understand why your body is reacting the way it is, and give it a plan it can actually tolerate.

Comment OPTIMAL if you want help investigating the bigger picture, including mold when it deserves a seat at the table, and building a plan that does not bulldoze your system.