Nurse to Health Coach

A Compassionate Registered Nurse who practiced in conventional medicine for over 20 years turned to functional medicine to address the root cause of her own health challenges and then started helping others find lasting solutions.

Episode #7

“Be your own advocate and take control of your own health…you have permission to prioritize yourself.”

Nikki Lacy has gratefully served as a registered nurse (RN) for 23 years. She has always taken advantage of her opportunities and utilizes her passion to serve others in the medical field. She shares how working in the healthcare field for over 20 years and seeing much illness and despair she decided she wanted to focus on helping people learn how to take control of their life and restore their wellbeing.

Over the years during her practice as an RN, her perspectives began to shift towards proactive strategies that complement a “well care” approach versus the current diagnose and prescribe model she was working in.  Nikki grew weary of watching her patients continue to struggle with symptoms even as they were being prescribed long-term medications. At the same time, she began to suffer through chronic illness herself.

Nikki’s own medications were not providing relief and she was continually suffering through gastrointestinal pain such as reflux, burning stomach acid, and fatigue. She is an active person with 2 teenage kids and found herself not being able to get off the couch due to the level of pain and lethargy. Her labs and endoscopies were appearing normal, but she had an intuition that things were not right. She had to make a choice. She would either continue on the path similar to her patients, depending on a lifetime of medications and still experience crippling symptoms or try an elimination diet as a means to heal.

Nikki turned to functional medicine to get to the root cause of her illness.  On her own, she took dairy, sugar, and caffeine out of her diet and within 30 days began to feel better and her symptoms dissolved.   Food had become her medicine!

She knew she had found an effective solution and she was determined to help more people using her own story. She pursued her certification as a Functional Medicine Health Coach to transition from traditional to functional medicine.

Nikki knows first hand that a diagnosis is not a permanent “life sentence” and believes that with the right tools, education, compassionate support, and a strong mindset, lasting changes are possible! She wants to see people take control of their health and is willing to stand in the gap for her clients and patients.

She sees firsthand how stress and busyness can be a major trigger for her clients and she’s on a mission to support them in discovering the power of rest! Giving their brain and body time to recover. She encourages and supports her clients to prioritize their time and begin to explore what brings them joy.

Nikki’s favorite health tip is to find ways to make your time precious to you! Find things you are passionate about, that fill you up and do more of that in life. She desires to help her clients recognize that life is about so much more than work and busyness. Her calm presence and nurturing spirit will fill you up and cause you to believe in the power of rest and discovering ways to restore!

If you’re looking for support from EHOP Health for your company or organization visit www.ehophealth.com. Are you an individual looking for health support? Visit www.journey2health.com/individuals

Key Takeaways

  • Leaning into passions and opportunities to Serve others

  • The difference between Conventional medicine and Functional medicine

  • Avoiding a lifetime of Medications

  • The power of an elimination diet

  • Education and compassionate coaching are keys to lasting change

  • Rest and rejuvenation are keys to a healthy life