About Rachel
After almost losing my life, I’m here to help you keep yours.
Welcome friend!
I’m Rachel Ballard, RN, BSN, NTP and I’ve been where you are.
After waking up one morning in 2019 unable to lift my arms, I started down an exhausting road of long waits for doctor appointments, a spinal tap that left me deaf for 21 days, painful nerve tests and several very long MRI’s.
It took almost a year and three misdiagnoses to find out that I had a very rare and aggressive paralyzing autoimmune disease called Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP). At age 39, doctors told me that there was no cure and I’d live out my life in a nursing home as the disease ate away at my nervous system leaving me deaf, blind and dependent on others.
Over the next couple of years I did in fact deteriorate rapidly into a wheelchair. My children helped me brush my teeth and did my hair. I needed help dressing, bathing and moving from place to place. As a Registered Nurse, active farmer and highly driven business owner, I felt like my entire identity had been ripped away.
Out of pure desperation, I decided to try the few traditional methods of disease control from my neurologist. We discovered that I was in the percentage of patients who get worse on the prescription medications.
When those failed, my doctor just shrugged and told me to “wing it” on my own. I left her office that day with no follow up appointment and no hope. I sobbed in my car and begged God for help.
Abandoned by the medical system, I decided that if I was going to die, I wanted to go down fighting my way.
I didn’t need a doctor to tell me what my future was going to be. That was my choice.
And that was what I did.
I saw Naturopaths and Functional Medicine doctors–both of whom followed the “take all your money, test you to death and give you $1000 worth of supplements” game but nothing else. Finally, I turned to nutritional therapy after hearing an NTP on a podcast.
I began drinking homemade broths, prioritizing deep sleep, eating nutrient dense foods, and detoxifying both my home and body. It was constant work–but the best possible kind to keep my mind occupied and off my uncertain future. It gave me a goal to work toward each day.
Within weeks, I began to have glimmers of less inflammation and tiny tingles of feeling in my paralyzed body. About six months in to treatment, one toe moved juuuuust barely. My family cheered like we’d just won the Super Bowl.
Seven months from the start, I was out of my wheelchair and took my first trip to the grocery store on a cane. It was my first independent trip out of my house in almost 10 months.
There have been lots of ups and downs since then and I still have some numbness and subtle things that pop up if I don’t take care of myself but they always go away!
How Nutritional Therapy Changed My Life
Nutritional therapy helped me connect the dots between a lifetime of seemingly unconnected health issues.
I had yearly bronchitis as a child (and so many antibiotics!), 20 years of IBS, migraines, strange rashes, thyroid disease, two miscarriages and so many other mysterious symptoms that were all signs that my body was begging for support.
Today I live well without any assistive devices and no conventional medical interventions. I relish the sun on my face, the joy of taking out the trash and being able to say “No I don’t need any help” when my family offers me a hand or an arm to lean on.
In truth, I’m still healing even now and this journey allows me to truly know how it feels to be overwhelmed by illness, and brings a unique form of empathy to the care I give to you.
I’ll never ask you to anything I haven’t already done myself.
I am your partner, coach, teammate and listening ear. I still live on the food and lifestyle choices I’m going to ask you to do so I know it’s possible.
I celebrate each accomplishment you make as if it were my own and welcome you in to my office to change your life too–no matter what anyone has said is possible.