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"Your symptoms are not proof that something is wrong with you. They are signals, telling you where to look." - Rachel Carta, RN, CFNC

Your Symptoms Are Signals, Not Sentences

I can still see myself standing outside my neurologist's office, the third one I had seen in less than a year, saying words I never expected to hear come out of my own mouth: "I think I'm going to try celery juice, because nothing you're giving me is helping me."

I was newly married. I was living in a new state. I was working as a nurse on a COVID unit, watching things no one should have to watch, and my body was falling apart underneath me. Migraines that would not let go. Gut issues that made every meal a gamble. A racing, wired kind of exhaustion I could not sleep my way out of. And every specialist gave me some version of the same non-answer. Here's another medication. Here's another medication. Here's another medication. Nothing changed, because nothing was actually being answered.

If you have ever sat in an exam room and heard "your labs are all normal" while every part of you was insisting that something was wrong, you already know exactly what that felt like.

I was a guest recently on The Organized Coach podcast, talking with Tracy Hoth, whose work lives in the world of business and organization, about something we do not talk about nearly enough: how much of what we blame on our mindset, our discipline, or our business itself is actually coming from our body. We went deep on why so many high-achieving women feel like they are white-knuckling their way through their to-do list, and what their body might actually be trying to tell them underneath all of it.

This is not medical advice, and it is not a replacement for your doctor. But it is the thing I wish someone had told me back when I was standing outside that office with a jug of celery juice in mind. Your symptoms are not proof that something is wrong with you. They are information.

Symptoms Are Signals, Not Sentences

Here is what changed everything for me. My body was not failing me. It was talking to me, and I had never been taught how to listen.

The gut issues, the migraines, the mood swings, the nervous system that never seemed to power down. They were not separate problems that each needed their own specialist and their own prescription. They were connected. Once I understood that, I stopped treating my body like a list of broken parts and started treating it like a whole system trying to tell me something.

Your symptoms are not proof that something is wrong with you. They are signals, telling you where to look.

In my work, I take clients back to three roots that almost everything traces to: genes, digestion, and inflammation. People hear "genes" and assume that is the end of the conversation, that whatever runs in the family is simply their fate. It is not. This is where epigenetics comes in, the science of how our genes get turned on or off based on how we live. Heart disease runs in my family, and I watched what it did to my father. That does not mean I am destined to repeat it. It means the way I eat, sleep, move, and manage stress has real influence over which of those genes ever get expressed.

Think of it like a garden. When I lived near the ocean, my soil was sandy, and almost nothing grew well no matter how good the seed was. Now I live somewhere the soil is rich, and things thrive without much effort at all. The roots, genes, digestion, and inflammation, only grow the way the soil around them allows. If you want to change what is growing, you have to change the soil, not just the plant.

That is also why I tell clients to picture an autoimmune diagnosis as a branch on a tree, not the root of the tree itself. Something in the genes, digestion, and inflammation, the soil, has been off for long enough that the body finally flips a switch, and it starts attacking itself. It is rarely one thing. It is stress, mindset, nutrition, and environment, all compounding at once. And there is real hope here, because if the terrain created the problem, changing the terrain is exactly how healing begins.

Running Your Business With the Fire Alarm On

Your nervous system does not know the difference between a genuine emergency and a genuinely overwhelming to-do list. Your brain cannot tell what is actually most important in the moment. If you have twenty things on your list, your survival brain treats all twenty as equally urgent. Organizing your grandmother's trinkets can register as just as pressing as finishing the lead magnet that is supposed to move your business forward, because your nervous system is not the part of your brain that ranks priorities. That job belongs to your prefrontal cortex, and your prefrontal cortex only comes fully online once your nervous system feels safe enough to hand over the wheel.

Fight or flight is not the enemy. Getting stuck there, unable to move into rest and digest, is.

Picture trying to run your business or your career with a fire alarm going off in the background the entire day. That is what it feels like to operate from a nervous system stuck in fight or flight. You are scanning for danger instead of thinking clearly, and there is a real difference between the two.

Sometimes there is something else happening underneath that too. Maybe you have not eaten in seven hours and your blood sugar has quietly dropped out from under you, and now you are irritable, sweating, and unable to focus, and you assume you are simply failing at your business. Maybe it is emotional stress showing up through the gut-brain connection. Maybe it is a hormone shift you have not put a name to yet. I love the way one client described it to me: it feels like your Wi-Fi turned off in your brain. You are not undisciplined. Your body is waving a flag, and the sooner you can read it, the sooner you can respond to what it is actually asking for.

Small, Repeatable Shifts

The very first step is not a supplement or a protocol. It's paying attention.

I have clients build what I call a pattern awareness inventory. Notice what happens physically, mentally, and emotionally after you eat a certain food, after a stretch of bad sleep, after time with someone who leaves you depleted. You are not doing this to find blame. You are doing it to find your own patterns, because you cannot change something you have never actually noticed.

From there, the most effective tools I know are small and repeatable, not elaborate. In the world of business, the saying goes that complexity is the enemy of execution, and the same is true for your health. The more complicated a health protocol is, the shorter you will actually stick with it. Every strict diet or ambitious new workout plan you have ever abandoned proves the same point.

So start absurdly small. A three-minute nervous system reset can look as simple as putting your hand on your heart the moment you wake up, before your brain defaults to "what do I have to do today," and instead breathing all the way down into your belly. That deep, diaphragmatic breath calms the vagus nerve, the nerve running from your gut to your brain that is behind the entire gut-brain connection. If breathwork is not your thing, it can be a morning prayer or a quick brain dump in a journal. The goal is simply telling your nervous system, I am safe, before you ask it to perform for the rest of the day. As the saying goes, repetition is the mother of mastery, and that is exactly how a habit this small ends up changing something as large as your health.

Blood sugar swings are another quiet driver of the brain fog, irritability, and lack of focus so many women blame on themselves. Every meal built around fat, fiber, and protein together helps stabilize blood sugar so you are not crashing an hour after breakfast wondering why you suddenly feel furious. Keep it simple: chicken, ground turkey, beans, or tofu for protein, avocado, olive oil, nuts, or seeds for fat, and chia seeds, raspberries, or whole grains for fiber. Women should be aiming for around 25 grams of fiber a day, though if your digestion is already sensitive, add it slowly rather than all at once. Real, whole food already comes with everything the body needs to break it down well, created with the perfect cofactors God built right into it. That is different from adding a fiber supplement on top of a diet that is otherwise missing the real thing.

And if you can only change one thing, change your sleep. It is during sleep that your body actually heals and repairs, so if you are trying to resolve a chronic symptom without prioritizing rest, healing simply cannot happen the way it is supposed to. You do not need a full sleep system overhaul on day one. If turning your screen off an hour before bed feels impossible, try thirty minutes first. Build a wind-down routine simple enough that you genuinely look forward to it, whether that is stretching on the floor, a cup of tea, or dimming the lights. Even before any tracker or app, a scrap of paper where you jot down what time you fell asleep, how many times you woke, and what time you got up will tell you more than you think.

The soil matters more than the symptom growing out of it.

What to Take With You

One new understanding: the nervous system is often what decides whether you can actually focus, digest, and think clearly on a given day.

One next step: start a simple pattern awareness inventory this week. Just notice, without judgment, what happens in your body after meals, after poor sleep, and after stressful moments.

One shift to try today: build your very next meal around fat, fiber, and protein together, and see how you feel an hour later.

Lots of love,

Rachel

Resources Mentioned

Find Rachel on Instagram: @peaceinperimenopause

Eat Well Made Easy Course

Rachel's Free Resources:

Mood Swings? Get the 5 minute audio to calm them now. https://rachelcartarn.com/sos

Do you want to understand more of what's changing in your body in midlife and get a few simple tools to feel better now? Get the free guide: The Real Reason You Still Feel Off.

Ready to Talk: Book a Clarity & Relief Session here.