Carrie Thienes is a Certified Nutritional Therapist, wife and mother whose background includes a degree in Mathematics, Education, and a Certificate in Nutritional Therapy. Incorporating her love of analytics, nutrition, and teaching, she is dedicated to using research-based, scientific assessment methods in her Nutritional Therapy practice.

My Story

Growing up, I have always loved food. As early as I can remember, I would eagerly order vegetables off of the menu when we ate out at restaurants and would always ask for grilled steak for my birthday dinner. I guess I was sort of a “paleo kid”. But growing up in Atlanta in the 80’s, I had plenty of good old southern food, including lots of fried foods, sweet teas and “Coke”, and I developed an obsession for bread and carbs. Being half Italian, I immensely enjoyed all kinds of pastas and noodles. Thankfully, I was such an active child that obesity was never a problem on this type of diet.

As a teenager, I was plagued with extreme moodiness, acne, and a perfectionism that earned me good grades, but also drove up my anxiety level. I remember feeling a constant state of “the butterflies” in my stomach during the school year, feeling that every day was an emotional battle with depression, anxiety, and “not being good enough”. Knowing what I know now, those years were wearing on my body and my stress handling systems. On top of that, I also ran cross country, and played basketball and tennis, which brought on tendonitis and shin splints. So Ibuprofen became my “best friend”!

I managed to keep excellent grades through high school and earned a full scholarship to a private university. In college, I worked hard in school and in my part-time job, and had very little sleep. I enjoyed endless amounts of bagels, cookies, and the “waffle bar” in the college dining hall (with salads, of course!) and got about 4 hours of sleep per night. I was also taking antibiotics to help “cure” my acne. I managed to pull through college and then get a Master’s degree, battling fatigue and anxiety and moodiness all the while. Looking back, my tolerance for sugar was wavering dramatically. PMS was severe, along with aches and pains of all sorts.

One of the most pivotal experiences of my early adulthood was traveling to Nepal and India for 1 month. Seeing how simply and “naturally” the villagers ate and lived really had a profound impact on me. The different ways that the villagers approached their pain management and health was very inspiring. I decided, upon my return to the United States, that masking pain with Advil wasn’t the answer. Suddenly I was becoming more mindful of my aches and pains without rushing to cover them up. I started to begin to listen to my body.

Fortunately for me, I married into a very healthy family. My husband’s stepmother and father are both fabulous cooks, and they focus on fresh, organic produce and healthy meats. Becoming a part of their family naturally exposed me to delicious, nutritious foods and allowed me to be more health conscious.

Unfortunately, the stress of being a “double income, no kid” family left me little time to actually prepare much besides pastas and burritos in our early married life. The stress combined with less-than-optimal food choices (I was eating tater tots in the high school cafeteria where I taught along with a chocolate Slim Fast for lunch each day!) brought on extreme health challenges for my husband. He was dealing with chronic fatigue, and later what we found out to be something weird called “leaky gut” (NO one was talking about Leaky Gut back then!) and “candida” (another mystery “quack” issue). My strong motivation to help my husband recover (after GI doctors and Naturopaths alike couldn’t offer any solutions) lead me to do my own research.

Together, we began to cut out refined carbs and gluten, and eat many more vegetables. My husband started getting colon hydrotherapy, massage, and foot reflexology. We started to be more conscious of what were putting into our bodies. I chose to go raw vegan for a few months and although I felt really good initially, it wasn't the best preconception diet. I was down to 121 lbs., my lowest since I was 14 years old, and then I became pregnant with my daughter.

My daughter’s pregnancy is a whole story in and of itself, but suffice to say it is a miracle that she made it 9 months and survived her very scary, emergency birth. I had a traumatic, emergency C-section after having planned a home birth. Kirsten nearly died, but shocked every doctor in the NICU with her amazing rebound from an Apgar score of 1 to a score of 8 within 5 minutes. Even with no amniotic fluid, a completely calcified placenta, the chord wrapped around her neck and trunk 3 times, and impacted meconium below the vocal chords, Kirsten miraculously had no infection in her lungs, no visible brain damage, and best of all, a completely normal blood glucose and blood oxygen level. The doctors had never seen anything like this!

As you can imagine, the stress of the C-section did a number on my body and it was never the same again (I swear they did something to my intestines during that surgery! They were never the same again!!!). I struggled to produce enough milk for Kirsten, and was unable to lose the 40 extra pounds I weighed after the birth. All I craved was ice cream and cake for 14 months! I was so depressed because I couldn't fit into any of my clothes and had to purchase new “big” clothes to fit me. I felt like a totally different person who had failed as a mother since I could not nurse and couldn’t “successfully” birth her naturally.

Kirsten, on the other hand, was a very difficult baby. She didn’t sleep well from the start and could never be put down. My adrenal glands were on such “high alert” that I could hardly sleep for fear of when she would wake me up. These were some of the most miserable months of my life, other than the fact that I LOVED being a mom and LOVED my daughter completely. It was also a lonely and confusing time. I spent hours on the computer researching low milk supply and natural methods of increasing it.

As the months went by, I started to feel stronger from my C-section, although I was in chronic, dull pain from the abdominal surgery. At 9 months postpartum, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to start exercising outdoors, rain or shine, so my husband bought me a jogging stroller. I started taking long walks every day. The weight wasn’t coming off, so I started to research the nutritional piece of the puzzle.

I started eating 75% of my meal as fresh vegetables with 25% protein (eggs, dairy, or meat) and a small amount of whole grains. This turned out to really help me and I lost 35 pounds over the next 4 months. I started to fit into my old clothes and feel great! I still hand lingering pain, but I was really happy about my energy levels when I finally cut out the refined carbs. I still had a sweet tooth, so I spent lots of time trying to make recipes that would “naturally” satisfy my sweet tooth, without refined sugars.

This eventually led me to Nourishing Traditions. I was going to town with sprouted flour, soaked grains, and Rapadura. It was really fun, and I enjoyed baking. This also opened me up to the world of fermented foods such as lacto-fermented beet kvass and Kombucha. I made all of these items from scratch, and started drinking raw milk. By now, I was pregnant with my second child and much more intentional about eating healthfully.

Meanwhile, my daughter Kirsten was showing major signs of a digestive issue, and we noticed fat in her stools as well as undigested food (such as oats and nuts). The doctor sent us for testing for alpha-gliadin antibodies, but they were negative (by that time I had pulled all gluten out of her diet). They also sent us to a Pediatric GI doctor, but they couldn't really help me. They diagnosed it as “chronic diarrhea”. I knew it was something more, but I was tired of paying the extra money for “gluten-free crackers” so I just kept feeding her gluten since the doctor said she wasn’t intolerant.

After my son was born (and the recovery was much better with my boot-legged Kombucha at my hospital bedside!), I started to feel a lot of pain from a cyst that had developed on my left ovary. My son was also having a really hard time digesting Enfamil (I still had a low milk supply, so had to supplement). I started to run out of options for Jonathan, and he was failing to thrive pretty quickly. That’s when I started to make my own formula for him, and he dramatically improved as soon as he started drinking raw goat’s milk formula. You can read his whole story about how Goat Milk Formula healed my son here.

As I began to research further, I started to suspect that gluten was affecting my digestion. The birth of my son seemed to trigger something in my daughter, because her behavior became progressively more difficult after my son was born. I know this is can be somewhat typical, however my husband and I were unsure if that was all there was to the story.

When my son was just 1 year old, we finally visited a nutritional-minded naturopath in our area who was able to use kinesiology to uncover some underlying issues that we all had been suspecting. For my husband, it was extreme adrenal fatigue. For me, it was adrenal fatigue and gluten intolerance. For Kirsten, it was mercury toxicity and nearly all grains. At that point in time, I decided to take the plunge and start the GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) and we began a totally new cooking journey.

GAPS worked really well to help get my daughter’s candida under control. It also helped her to seem more calm and satiated. We still eat a more-or-less “GAPS” diet to this day, but we’ve cut down on the fruit and honey that are allowed on GAPS and have seen great results with those omissions. We were overall very happy with the results from the GAPS diet, despite all of the huge inconveniences of living life on GAPS! I even had to pull my daughter out of preschool due to all of the difficult dietary restrictions. I started writing the www.organicthrifty.com blog where I catalogued our journey with GAPS and how to eat healthy on a budget.

I studied nutrition extensively and had discovered a newfound passion. My love for my family fueled my desire to learn more about how they could achieve optimal wellness. I shared my discoveries with any interested friend or family member who would listen to me. I offered a lot of “armchair” nutritional advice through my blog, but eventually I felt that some more formal education would be important to give credibility to what I was doing. I found out about a fantastic program through the Nutritional Therapy Association.

I began a year-long intensive study on whole foods Nutritional Therapy and it was the most exciting year of school I have ever experienced. I could not get enough of it, and still to this day can’t quench my love of learning about all things related to Nutrition and Biochemistry! After completing my certification, I went on to study Functional Endocrinology and Functional Blood Chemistry Analysis under Dr. Datis Kharrazian, a nutritional chiropractor whose work I respect greatly. I then was given the opportunity to train in Nutritional Balancing Science under Dr. Larry Wilson, whose 30+ years of experience as a Nutritional Consultant as proved to be a wealth of knowledge for me!

Under Dr. Wilson’s guidance, I began my own Nutritional Balancing protocol based on the results of my own Hair Mineral Analysis and began to notice results dramatically. The sauna therapy drastically improved my pain, along with the nourishing supplemental protocol that covered all of my bases nutritionally. The pain in my back is only a distant memory now, and the moodiness, fatigue, anxiety, and PMS are totally eradiated now. My hair tests have shown significant improvement as well, which is really encouraging.

I honestly feel that every difficult health experience in my past has led me to a place where I understand more than I ever imagined I would. I know I have LOTS more to learn and apply in clinical practice, but the wealth of knowledge I have gained from working with clients has been amazing as well.

During my difficult years, I considered all of my health problems to be insurmountable and hopeless.

I know now that with dedication and the right nutrition, many of my “mountains” have been able to crumble to the sea. But most of all, I learned the spiritual lesson that often times our most difficult challenges become our path to use our gifts and to help heal the world.

I encourage anyone reading this to look at their health challenges as a doorway to a new, unexplored world, full of hope and healing. When we openly embrace our difficulties, and surrender fully, a small candle is ignited to light the way. A miracle comes.

If I can be of any help to your on your health journey, please contact me. I would love to know your story and see if I can shine a light for your way!