Patterns in Hindsight
The Root of The Root — Part 3
If you're new here, this is a 4-part series and you've landed in part 3. Part 1 covered the very beginning of my health journey — from childhood trauma to a gut that started falling apart early. Part 2 was about the first warning sign my body sent me: my skin. Part 3 is where I get to zoom out and look at the science that finally made everything make sense. And honestly? It still amazes me. We're jumping ahead to March 2026. In Part 4, we'll go back to age 43 — when the real healing began. Trust me, you won't see it coming.
Root of the Root - Part 1
Root of the Root - Part 2
Birth Control and Hormones: What Nobody Told Me It Was Doing
My story continued into young adulthood the way a lot of women's do. Birth control didn't end with Accutane. It became part of my daily routine from my mid-teens all the way to age 37 — and the doses got higher over the years as my symptoms got louder. I used it to manage brutal PMS. It helped me feel calmer, less reactive, more like myself.
What I didn't know — and what took me decades to piece together — is that the synthetic estrogen I was swallowing every single day was doing a whole lot more than managing my cycle.
Here's the simple version: your gut has a normal balance of bacteria and yeast living in it. Think of it like a neighborhood — everyone gets along, no one takes over. But years of antibiotics and Accutane had already shifted that balance in my body. The yeast — specifically something called Candida — was looking for an opportunity to move in and expand.
Synthetic estrogen, based on the research I've read, appears to be exactly the kind of environment Candida loves. It can flip Candida from its quiet, harmless form into an aggressive, invasive one — kind of like a weed that suddenly decides to take over the whole yard.
I only understood this in hindsight. But the clues were there all along: weight that crept up slowly year after year — 70+ pounds over time — and more yeast infections than I care to count.
The pill wasn't evil. It was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. But in my body — with my history — it was the third domino in a chain that nobody ever thought to connect.
MTHFR: The Gene That Changed Everything
To understand why all of this hit me harder than it might hit someone else, you need to know something about how my body was built. I’ve read stats that up to 40% of the population have similar issues.
I found this out after having my son at age 39. His birth sent my system into a tailspin, and in the process of figuring out what was wrong, a functional medicine doctor tested my genetics. That's when I found out I have Graves' Disease and something called MTHFR gene variants.
MTHFR sounds intimidating, but here's the plain English version:
Your body has a process it runs constantly, called methylation. Think of methylation like your body's internal cleaning crew. It repairs DNA, makes your mood chemicals (like serotonin), balances hormones, and — really importantly — takes out the trash. Toxins, old hormones, chemicals your body doesn't need anymore — methylation packs them up and ships them out.
To do all of that, your body needs a specific enzyme (MTHFR) to convert a form of folate — the B vitamin — into the active version it can actually use.
I carry three MTHFR variants, which means my cleaning crew is running at roughly half speed. Not broken — but slow. And I was born that way, without ever knowing it.
When the Pattern Started to Make Sense
Here's where my health history stops looking like a streak of bad luck and starts looking like a predictable chain reaction. I've spent years studying this — on my own, with health coaches, and with three different functional medicine doctors across my 30s and 40s.
At age 10, I had a severe reaction to penicillin. Hives, itching — and symptoms that lingered for years.
At 31, I went into anaphylactic shock from MRI contrast dye. My throat closed. My face swelled. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life.
Here's what science helped me understand looking back: my MTHFR variants make it harder for my body to clear histamine — that chemical your body releases during allergic reactions. Normally, your body produces it and then breaks it back down. But when that breakdown process runs slow, histamine builds up. And a body that's already swimming in excess histamine reacts much harder than it should.
Reactions that would be minor for someone else became near-emergencies for me. Not because I was weak — because my clearance system was behind from day one.
There's another piece to this. MTHFR also affects how much glutathione your body makes. Glutathione is essentially your liver's most important tool for neutralizing toxins — heavy metals, mold, drug residues, anything your body needs to eliminate.
I'll talk more about mold exposure in another article. But here's the short version: when I was later exposed to black mold, I was doing it with a detox system that had been running at half capacity my entire life. Even though I had done significant healing by that point, the mold was a serious adversary. That story is coming.
Estrogen, Histamine, and the Loop Nobody Warned Me About
This is where it gets really personal.
In 2024, a detailed genetics test revealed I have variants in both MTHFR and another enzyme called COMT. These two work as a team to clear estrogen out of your body. When MTHFR is slow, it starves COMT of what it needs to do its job. When both are sluggish? Estrogen stacks up instead of leaving.
And here's the part that genuinely floored me: accumulated estrogen activates the cells in your body that release histamine. And histamine — research suggests — can then trigger your body to make more estrogen. It's a loop. One feeds the other. Over and over.
Imagine running that loop in a body that had been on high-dose synthetic estrogen for two decades. The overflow had nowhere to go but inward.
What does this loop feel like? Skin flare-ups. Hives. Unexplained weight gain. Mood swings. Anxiety. Bad sleep. Headaches. Reactions to foods or environments that never used to bother you. Symptoms that feel random, cyclical, and impossible to pin down.
Sound familiar?
What Birth Control Was Quietly Draining
While all of this was happening, the pill was doing something else most doctors never mentioned.
Multiple studies have shown that oral contraceptives deplete the exact B vitamins the methylation cycle depends on — specifically B6, B12, and folate. B6 depletion can start showing up within the first month of use.
For most women, this is manageable. Your body compensates.
But for someone like me — with MTHFR variants that already make it harder to convert folate into a usable form — this was like draining a tank that was never very full to begin with. Year after year, the deficit quietly compounded. Energy got lower. Brain fog crept in. Moods became harder to stabilize. The body got slower at healing, slower at recovering, slower at everything.
We usually call that "getting older." But sometimes it's something else entirely.
The Cellulite I Couldn't Explain (Until Now)
From my teens into adulthood, I had cellulite that made no sense to me. I was active. I watched what I ate. I worked out. And yet — it didn't budge.
The moment it finally clicked was in my 40s. I was deep in hormone research, frustrated and honestly a little angry, and I came across something that stopped me cold.
Estrogen doesn't just affect your mood and your cycle. It literally shapes the structure of your connective tissue — the thin bands that run beneath your skin, especially in your thighs and glutes. High estrogen promotes fat storage in those areas and changes the architecture of those bands in a way that creates the dimpled look we call cellulite.
This isn't a willpower failure. It's not a body composition failure. It's a structural imprint left by a hormonal environment — one I had been living in since age 14.
Even after losing 70+ pounds. Even after years of weight training and cardio. The dimples remained. Because muscle doesn't undo what decades of synthetic estrogen already built into the tissue itself.
Understanding that changed something in me. Not the cellulite — but my relationship with my body. For the first time, I stopped reading it as evidence that I had failed. I had participated in patterns I never understood. And once I could see that clearly, something that felt a lot like compassion finally crept in.
When It All Started to Make Sense
I finally had a map. I could see where it all started — in grief, in a gut reshaped by years of antibiotics and Accutane, in synthetic estrogen pouring into a body already prone to fungal overgrowth, in a detox system that had been running at half speed since birth.
Knowing all of this didn't fix me overnight. I uncovered these explanations through years of research and stubbornness — because I needed to understand. And the thing I most want you to know is this: I did heal. I needed to understand how and why so I could share it with you.
If any of this sounds familiar — if you've felt like your body reacts harder than it should, like your symptoms don't quite add up, like you're doing everything right and still not getting better — you are not alone. And healing is possible.
In Part 4, I'll tell you what happened at 43 — when the healing really began. I stumbled into a system entirely by accident. Each thing I started doing was addressing a layer of dysfunction I didn't even know existed.
I cannot wait to share it.
Thank you for reading all the way to the end.
PS - I’d love to hang out in your inbox. Please join the list so we can keep in touch, and my goal is to help you find motivation and consistincy when they are lacking!
References
PubMed Central — Estrogen promotes Candida virulence and innate immune evasion; high-estrogen oral contraceptives documented risk factor for candidiasis: Cell Reports, PMC (2022)
The Candida Diet — Oral contraceptives deplete B vitamins and magnesium; combined with estrogen dominance impairs homocysteine regulation: The Candida Diet
PMC — MTHFR enzyme converts folate to its active form; variants reduce enzyme activity and disrupt the folate cycle leading to hyperhomocysteinemia: MTHFR Gene Polymorphisms: Wide-Ranging Clinical Implications, PMC (2025)
Allergy Research Group — MTHFR variants impair methylation and glutathione production; estrogen requires methylation for efficient breakdown and elimination: Detox Pathways and MTHFR, Allergy Research Group
PubMed — Heterozygotes carrying both C677T and A1298C variants have approximately 50–60% of normal MTHFR enzyme activity: A second genetic polymorphism in MTHFR associated with decreased enzyme activity, PubMed (1998)
Methyl-Life — MTHFR variants impair histamine clearance via HNMT enzyme disruption; impaired methylation leads to histamine accumulation and hypersensitivity reactions: MTHFR and Histamine Levels, Methyl-Life
Dr. Hagmeyer — Impaired MTHFR enzyme leads to elevated homocysteine and reduced capacity to detoxify, exacerbating histamine-related symptoms and gastrointestinal dysfunction: MTHFR and Histamine Intolerance, Dr. Hagmeyer
Methyl-Life — MTHFR impairs glutathione production; glutathione is the body's master antioxidant and primary liver detoxifier: Glutathione and MTHFR, Methyl-Life
Joanne Kennedy Naturopathy — Inadequate estrogen detoxification due to impaired MTHFR/COMT causes estrogen buildup that stimulates mast cells to release histamine, creating an estrogen-histamine feedback loop: MTHFR and Histamine Intolerance, Joanne Kennedy Naturopathy
PubMed — Oral contraceptives deplete folate, B2, B6, B12, magnesium, selenium, and zinc; estrogen lowers vitamins required for homocysteine remethylation: European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences, PubMed (2013)
