The Functional Pharmacist

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The Functional Pharmacist I help women connect hormones, labs, energy, brain fog, metabolism, sleep and whole-body health without the brush-off.

For saveable women’s health guides, follow me on Instagram: I'm a Pharmacist, a mom of 2, wife, and pharmacy owner. My passion has always been helping others through my work in pharmacy. Over the last 5 years, my approach has drastically changed. Early on, my role in healthcare was to educate and counsel patients about their prescribed medication at our local pharmacy. While I loved providing education, I always felt there was more that I could do. I hated seeing 1 medication lead to 5 medications and many times my patients never felt any better. This lead me to studying functional medicine and learning how food, supplements, nutrients, hormones, and lifestyle play a major role in health. I am inspired by my patients who made drastic transformations to their overall health. In addition, I experienced what a healthy lifestyle and the right supplement plan did for me. Shifting the focus of my career to functional medicine and helping people achieve balanced health has brought an intensity to my practice to help as many people as I can.

Most women know they’re supposed to get a mammogram.But if I asked what actually affects your personal breast cancer ris...
10/20/2026

Most women know they’re supposed to get a mammogram.

But if I asked what actually affects your personal breast cancer risk, would you know?

That’s what Dr. Mindy Bowie and I want to talk about at Breast Health Reimagined.

We’re getting together over lunch to make breast health feel a little less confusing and a lot more personal.

What matters for you? What can you change? What can’t you? And what should you actually be paying attention to?

If you’re in Baton Rouge, come join us. Bring a friend too. 💗

📅 Thursday, October 29
⏰ 11:30 AM–1:30 PM
📍 The Crown Bistro inside The Royal Standard

Save your seat:
https://brand.synclife.health/qr/SqBdHYB0cKqN

10/19/2026

Why would being a woman change your chances of developing an autoimmune disease this much?

Researchers are looking at something much more basic than symptoms or lifestyle.

Women usually have two X chromosomes. Since our cells don’t need both copies fully active, one is mostly turned off.

Scientists recently found that the process used to keep that second X quiet may matter for autoimmunity.

Some of the proteins involved in that process are also proteins the immune system mistakenly attacks in people with autoimmune diseases.

That does NOT mean having two X chromosomes causes autoimmune disease. Plenty of women will never develop one, and men can develop them too.

It gives researchers another piece of the puzzle.

Hormones still matter. Genetics and environmental triggers matter too. But the female difference may also be built into how our cells manage that extra X chromosome.

That’s a very different direction than where this conversation used to stop.

Follow me for more practical women’s health information you can actually use.

10/15/2026

Here’s what makes breast arterial calcification so interesting:

It isn’t the same thing as the calcium doctors look for in the coronary arteries.

BAC forms in a different layer of the blood vessel and is more closely tied to arterial stiffness than to plaque narrowing the artery.

And the research around it is getting harder to ignore.

A 2026 meta-analysis of more than 236,000 people found that BAC was associated with higher risks of stroke, heart attack, heart failure, cardiovascular death, and overall mortality.

The strange part? There still isn’t one standardized guideline for how BAC should be reported or managed when it shows up on a mammogram.

So if it appears on your report, it doesn’t diagnose heart disease.

But it may be useful information to bring into the bigger conversation about blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, family history, and overall cardiovascular risk.

Follow me for more practical women’s health information you can actually use.

Most women know they should get screened for breast cancer.Far fewer have ever had someone sit down with them and explai...
10/13/2026

Most women know they should get screened for breast cancer.

Far fewer have ever had someone sit down with them and explain what their own risk actually looks like.

Family history is only one piece. Your health history, age, genetics and the choices you make over time can all be part of a much bigger picture.

That’s why Dr. Mindy Bowie, breast surgical oncologist, and I created Breast Health Reimagined.

On Thursday, October 29, we’re bringing women together in Baton Rouge for lunch and a real conversation about personal breast health: what shapes your risk, what you may be able to influence, and what’s worth understanding beyond your routine screening.

You don’t need to already know the right questions to ask. That’s part of why we’re getting together.

📍 The Crown Bistro inside The Royal Standard
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

📅 Thursday, October 29
⏰ 11:30 AM–1:30 PM

Save your seat here:
https://brand.synclife.health/qr/SqBdHYB0cKqN

If there’s a woman in your life who would benefit from this conversation, send this her way. We’d love to have you both there.

10/12/2026

Sometimes the most useful clue is the symptom that doesn’t improve when you treat the obvious thing.

Take sleep.

Menopause can absolutely disrupt it. But menopause is also a stage when the risk of obstructive sleep apnea increases, and women with sleep apnea may present differently than many people expect.

Instead of obvious snoring, a woman may be talking about insomnia, waking throughout the night, morning headaches, anxiety, or feeling exhausted despite spending enough hours in bed.

That can become especially confusing in midlife because those complaints overlap so easily with menopause.

There are similar overlaps elsewhere. Thyroid disease can cause fatigue, weight changes, menstrual changes, constipation, and hair loss. And women who are still having heavy periods can develop iron deficiency before the situation necessarily looks like severe anemia.

None of that makes hormones less important.

It just means a woman can be in perimenopause and still have another very real reason she doesn’t feel well.

Follow me for more practical women’s health information you can actually use.

10/09/2026

There’s an incidental finding on mammograms that has almost nothing to do with breast cancer, but it may tell us something about a woman’s cardiovascular risk.

It’s called breast arterial calcification, or BAC.

In one large study of more than 5,000 women ages 60–79, those whose mammograms showed BAC had a 51% higher risk of developing coronary heart disease or having a stroke during follow-up.

One detail matters here: BAC is not the same thing as coronary artery calcium.

Coronary calcification is usually associated with atherosclerotic plaque in the inner arterial wall. BAC develops in a different layer of the artery and is more closely associated with vascular stiffness.

Researchers are increasingly studying it as a cardiovascular risk marker in women.

It still isn’t a heart disease diagnosis by itself, and there isn’t yet one standardized pathway for what to do when it appears.

But if BAC is mentioned on your mammogram report, it may be one more piece of information worth bringing into the conversation about your heart health.

Follow me for more practical women’s health information you can actually use.

A woman can have no family history of breast cancer and still have risk factors worth understanding.Family history and g...
10/09/2026

A woman can have no family history of breast cancer and still have risk factors worth understanding.

Family history and genetics matter, but they are only part of the picture. Age, breast density, personal breast history and other factors can influence risk. Some factors are outside our control, while others may offer opportunities to reduce risk over time.

That distinction is what makes an individualized conversation so valuable.

At Breast Health Reimagined, I’ll be joining breast surgeon Dr. Mindy Bowie, MD, for a special luncheon centered on understanding your personal breast health risk and exploring what you may actually be able to influence.

You don’t need another generic list of things women are “supposed” to do.

You need to understand what applies to you, and we hope you’ll join us for the conversation.

10/06/2026

Here’s a frustrating finding from newer endometriosis research:

Having MORE symptoms does not necessarily get someone diagnosed faster.

A 2026 study of nearly 7,000 women with endometriosis and/or adenomyosis found an average diagnostic delay of about 10 years for endometriosis. Women who reported multiple symptoms at their first consultation actually had longer delays in that cohort.

Severe period pain was also associated with a longer delay.

That helps explain why “bad periods” can be such a dangerous place to stop the conversation. Endometriosis can involve pelvic pain, painful periods, bowel or bladder symptoms, pain during s*x, fatigue and infertility, and those symptoms do not always arrive in one neat pattern.

The impact on daily life is useful information too.

If someone regularly cannot work, attend school, exercise, sleep, or function normally because of menstrual pain, that deserves proper evaluation rather than becoming her monthly routine.

Follow me for more practical women’s health information you can actually use.

10/03/2026

Sometimes the thyroid clue shows up on a completely different part of your lab report.

Cholesterol is one example.

Thyroid hormone helps regulate how the body handles cholesterol, and overt hypothyroidism can raise total and LDL cholesterol. In studies of people treated for overt hypothyroidism, correcting the thyroid deficiency has also been associated with meaningful reductions in cholesterol levels.

That doesn’t mean high cholesterol automatically equals a thyroid problem. It means thyroid function can be one piece worth understanding when the whole clinical picture points in that direction.

There’s another layer women often aren’t told about: Hashimoto’s, the most common cause of hypothyroidism in the U.S., happens when the immune system produces antibodies that damage the thyroid over time.

And because that process can develop gradually, symptoms may creep in slowly enough that someone simply adjusts to feeling different.

That helps explain how thyroid disease can remain unidentified for so long.

Follow me for more practical women’s health information you can actually use.

I stopped on this study because we’ve spent years talking about clogged arteries as though men and women reach danger in...
10/01/2026

I stopped on this study because we’ve spent years talking about clogged arteries as though men and women reach danger in exactly the same way.

Researchers followed more than 4,200 adults who had CT scans measuring plaque in the arteries around the heart. Women generally had less plaque than men. But less plaque did not give them the protection you might expect.

Their risk of heart attack and chest pain started showing up at lower plaque levels, and then climbed more sharply as the amount of plaque increased.

So when I look at a woman’s heart risk, I’m not interested in whether she looks like the classic cardiac patient. I want to know the actual numbers, her family history, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, smoking history, and whether symptoms show up with exertion.

A reassuring-looking risk profile can still leave important pieces out.

This study is another reason women’s heart disease needs to be read on women’s terms.

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