Living Hope 
Wellness  Coaching
&
Nutrition

​​Hi, I’m Marci D’Andrea!!

I have my Masters in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine,  I'm a Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist (LDN) and a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS®).  Additionally, I am a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, PompaCore Certified Health Coach and Positive Intelligence( PQ) Coach and I have a background as an inner city middle school Health Teacher  (6 years) and I worked in High School Special Education for 18 years.  

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My interest in nutrition, coaching and holistic approaches began as a college athlete and Health Education major.  As an inner city middle school teacher, I taught holistic principles and strategies to my students and had daily opportunities to do life coaching.  In 2001, my family was thrown into a health crisis, that became a long journey that needed more and more help. We took the traditional route at first, but we made very little progress and got very few answers. We wanted to know what was driving or causing the sudden and many chronic, un-diagnosed  health issues that started with my husband at 35 (1/2001), then my son at 3 months (10/2001),  in Oct. 2013 with our middle daughter at 14, then with me in September, 2017.  Each time we had more questions than answers. We wanted to work with health care professionals that would help us find the root causes. That proved to be impossible to fine in traditional medicine. So, I began to dive deeper, scouring the internet  in 2001, reading many books and talking to anyone who had an interesting idea to find help and answers. 

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Along the way, my knowledge grew as I was seeking help for our family's health situations.  Over the years I encountered many others having many health issues that were not improving, undiagnosed and/or getting worse.  I wanted to help them find lasting solutions too. In 2016, I went back to school to make that dream a reality by earing a MS, LDN, CNS® and getting several types of  Health Coaching trainings.  

 

​I love to help others, as well as being with my family and friends, being outdoors, skiing, hiking, gardening, swimming in the ocean, traveling, reading, coaching sports teams, cooking, serving the Lord, meeting new people and learning new things. I've been married since 1992, have 3 amazing adult children (28, 25, 23), and 2 handsome grandsons. 

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A Deeper Dive into Our  Story

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My Husband

In February 2001, when my husbands health took  a very deep, negative dive,  while we were living in NH. After traditional medicine left us needing more, our help came from 6 sources: a local chiropractor and local naturopathic doctor, Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Mercola online and a few books: Patient Heal Thy Self   by Jordan Rubin and Nourishing Traditions  by Sally Fallon. All six of these resources introduced strategies to help the body help itself through supporting the GI tract lining to be less leaky, improving absorption of nourishing foods and herbs, that helped improve nutrient deficiencies, the use of probiotics (homemade sauerkraut), removing some foods heavily sprayed,  lessening other environmental toxins and using many lifestyle strategies.  At this point, I was just trying to pull all this information together on my own, applying clues as I found them to our situations. The 2 doctors were a great help, but we would need more help and insight. 

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My husband had been extremally healthy, a past collage athlete, hiker, skier, worked out 3 days a week at the gym, had very clear thinking and no health issues. After a week long fever in Feb. 2001, his health took a huge negative turn. He began to have all these new & sudden issues: heart racing, 10-15 times a day for no reason, panic attacks, chronic fatigue/no energy,  food sensitives, weight loss (he was already lean, 6 ft, 165, fit), ringing in his ears, brain fog, eye issues, vertigo, sharp GI cramping, like many tiny knives being pushed into his GI tract, & bloating. It become hard to work, help with our 3 kids (5, 3, infant) and just do daily life. I have known him since he was 18, and none of this was normal for him. His primary physician  did many types of tests, examined him and said, " All his test looked fine, He must be depressed" and  he wanted to start him on an anti-depressant. We said, "No." He was not depressed, but his body  was way out of  balance/ homeostasis.  We asked, " What else could be causing these things to be happening and what else could be done?"  Silence.  After about 5 months of this, a friend from church recommended her chiropractor and he was a Huge help. With his digestion being so disrupted, he was not absorbing nutrients well and therefore  he was becoming low in many essential nutrients.  The chiropractor used Muscle Testing and then started him on some key supplements like a B Complex and a multivitamin.  Right away his heart racing stopped! But he still had all the other signs and symptoms. 

 

In 2001,  functional medicine was in it's infancy and hardly anyone was talking about leaky gut/ intestinal permeability or probiotics and there was very few strategies out there on how to improve digestion and GI health.  By January, 2002, I had found Patient Heal Thy Self , a ND  and the Nourishing Traditions cookbook.  Since food sensitives was such a big issue as well, he began using a healing vegetable, bone broth soup we made every 5 days, along with probiotics from homemade sauerkraut and Primal Defense. But his progress was very slow and he still needed more help. Over the years, we kept at it with a lot of trail and error.  He saw many types of  physicians and we learned  a lot, but I we were still missing some things.

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In 2005, we moved to central IL and had to find new physicians.  We found 2 new chiropractors right away, one helped us with weekly care and troubleshooting and the other used muscle testing and heavy metal testing as well as adjustments. My husband made some progress with them, but all the original signs and symptoms, minus the heart racing, were still present. He was down to eating only a few foods and did best with soups. He did some acupuncture, which calmed down his nervous system, and that helped him overall. But, we still needed to kept searching, applying strategies that seemed to have promise as the years went on. 

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In the Spring of  2016, we found  another Chiropractor and MD that had started to do functional medicine.  As the chiropractor worked on his skeletal and nervous systems,  the MD ran some new pathogen tests, heavy metals tests and hormone tests.  Armed with this new information and new strategies, he began to improve.  He still tested negative for Lyme & EBV, but positive for several viral infections and had several heavy metals that were high (mercury, arsenic, lead) and some low hormones. The MD made some therapeutic changes, and started him on the Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation Therapy (UVBI).  He did this with our daughter, see her story below. UBI proved to be Extremally helpful, reducing his pathogen/viral load, brain fog and increasing his energy.   He was not fully well, but was able to increase many of  his activities and work with fewer issues. 

 

After a bout with COVID in the spring of 2022, he relapsed.  This time we used an DO in Michigan who was very helpful. He now tested positive for Lyme (dark field microscopy blood test) and heavy metals again.  His lymphatic system in his legs was stagnate and he had a lot of fascia adhesions. She did body work and UVBI with ozone, which really helped, added in some heavy metals detoxing, and he began to feel better than he had in years.  But there was still room to improve and I felt like we were still missing something about his root causes or how to resolve the root causes. 

 

In October, 2023, I found a training program that I felt pulled it all together, True Cellular Detoxication through Dr. Pompa and Health Centers for the Future.  I got trained and he started doing the True Cellular Detox program, he improved right away and continues to do so.  We now know his root causes: the week long fever created a leaky gut, released toxins (mercury, lead, arsenic) that got reabsorbed into other areas like his brain, the releasing or reactivation of pathogens (viruses, Lyme) already stored in his body (cavitations in the jaw), causing a cascade of signs and symptoms that seemed unrelated, but damaged his GI tract lining, microbiome, threw off his nervous system and  promoted systemic inflammation.  Thanks to Dr. Pompa and his training program, we now know why and how to help his body reduce inflammation,  get rid of the heavy metal toxins and reduce the Lyme and other infections, in order to continue to improve his health and  get his quality of life back.

 

My Son

My son, who's the youngest, was born in July, 2001, and by October  presented with GI issues, eczema, his weight was low/ "failing to thrive", was sleeping poorly, even though I was only breastfeeding him.  His primary doctor gave us  a steroid cream for his skin, but when I asked, "What else can we do?"  Silence.  I went to a local dermatologist and he had nothing else to add. Even when I asked about diet and supplements. Silence. He refereed me out.  We had to wait till he was 2 to have allergy testing, so in the meantime,  I read a lot on the subject, and I found a ND who turned out to be a big help. He introduced us to the Nourishing Traditions cookbook and how to support his little body  better with nutrient dense foods, through me and as we introduced foods to him. I removed gluten and other typical allergens from my diet (breastfeeding) and the ND added some herbs, Milk Thistle Evening Primrose Oil, and probiotics.  As we introduce new foods to him as an infant and toddler,  we added healthier fats, whole plant foods like avocado, fruits, vegetables, chia seeds, homemade sauerkraut (cabbage juice is very healing to GI tract and has lots of Vit C)  and homemade vegetable, bone broth soup. His skin began to clear up, he was sleeping better and his GI issues were less. When he turned 2, we took him to a top pediatric allergy specialist at the Children's Hospital in Boston. She did an allergy prick test on his back and most everything reacted, but his skin looked great. She asked what we were doing. I explained his history and the guidance from our ND.  She said to keep doing that, but gave us a prescription for an epi-pen because some of his reactions to her prick test were very strong: egg, dairy, shellfish. We continued to have him avoid the many foods he was reacting to, while building up his GI tract and immune system. He did not eat school lunches until high school, his vaccine schedule was modified, delay and  eliminated to avoid those with known allergens in them. He ate very few processed foods and we found fun recipes he could eat that were high in protein, had healthy fats and  lots of plant foods. He can now tolerate most foods in moderation and as a young adult, is very healthy and eats healthier than his peers. He is now an advocate for his own health. 

   

Our Daughter

In October of  2013, our middle daughter came down with a fever that lasted 1 week. She was to be a 4 sport athlete (volleyball, basketball, track, softball), was a top student in her freshman class (11/ 250) and very outgoing. Once the fever cleared, she was having trouble waking up in the morning (new issue).  She'd roll out of  bed after several attempts by us to get her up (new issue), would get dressed, then sit down on the floor and fall back to sleep. We tried very hard to get her moving,  then she'd fall asleep in the car on the way to school and we couldn't get her to wake up. Off to the primary physician we went, he did a large number of tests and they all came back negative.  So, he said, " She must be depressed, let's try something to wake her up."  I said, "she is not depressed, because when she finally wakes up at noon-2 pm, she does her school work and wants to go to basketball practice.  I said, "No to the medication because I wanted to know what we were treating first."  I asked, " what would make her body not wake up?" Silence. I thought, here we go again.... So we did all the traditional things we could to get some deeper  answers, more tests, sleep studies (2), neurologist (2), but nothing. We applied all we had learned through my husband and son.  She would slowly improved at home after a few (2-3) months, enough to go back to school. She had 4 major crashes from Oct. 2013 to May, 2016, missing  350 days of high school.  A friend recommend a different chiropractor, who agreed to do a dig deeper (he reviewed all of her medical records). At his office, he had a handout form a Functional Medicine MD who offered heavy metal testing. I decided to have her and my husband checked for heavy metals too. Ultimately, it was Functional Medicine in conjunction with the chiropractic work that helped her get well.  At this point, she was refusing to take any more supplement, so we needed some new strategies.

 

So, in the spring of 2016, she started seeing both of these doctors. The Chiropractor used home PT between each session to strengthen the muscles to keep the adjustments in place. She saw him 3x week, then 2x then 1x . At the same time, the MD tested her for some other types of  viral infections, heavy metals and her hormone/cortisol levels. She had a very high load of several virus (not mono/EBV) and her cortisol levels were upside down, hence she could not wake up!! He started her on 10, Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI) Therapy sessions to kill off the pathogens he tested for and any others that might be there. She did these with her dad, who started with him and had a similar viral profile. She was done with both of these new doctors by the end of summer, 2016. She began her senior year, determined to graduate with her class, though she had taken many online classes while home sick to try to keep up, she was behind 15 credits and needed to complete her senior load. Thankfully, she was able to make up her 15 credits online while taking her normal senior load, including several classes that earned her college credits. She got through her senior year without a CRASH, finished all her classes, got to run track and gradate with her class!  She has not had any Crashes since, February, 2016, finished collage with 2 degrees and works full-time. She does some maintenance UBIs, hyperbaric chamber sessions and continues to eats a clean diet and watch her rest. 

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​Myself

As a lifelong caregiver and athlete, when my healthy started to struggle, I knew where to turn. Though I tried to take good care of myself, my sleep had suffered for years and the stress of caring for my family's unknow situations had caught up with me. 

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