You may not be functioning perfectly —
but you can still see a train wreck coming.
You’re exhausted.
Can’t sleep.
Brain fog has become a problem.
Your body hurts and you have headaches..
You need answers.
You want this to end.
When you need answers,
the Roots & Wings Roadmap to Renewed Health
can lead you to them.
You don't have to wait to be a train wreck to get answers.
You've taken stock. You've been to the doctor. Maybe you were told everything looks fine. Or, quite commonly — to follow up in three or six months. Would that doctor actually “wait and see” if it was him or his family?
You want answers now.
When your health has changed and you don't know why, waiting isn't actually a reasonable strategy. Why wait? And, if you did wait and see, are we waiting for things to get better — or worse?
Fortunately, The R&W Roadmap to Renewed Health was built specifically for people who have seen a decline in their health and their ability to get things done.
The stated goal for entering this program is to change the trajectory — from a downward decline in health and ability back toward either normal for you, or maybe even better than it was.
These are people who are roughly four, six, maybe eight months in — living with unexpected, emergent symptoms that may include:
1) pervasive exhaustion
2) inability to sleep well despite genuine effort
3) brain fog impacting name and word recall, driving and task completion
4) unexplained body aches and pain, headaches, and/or migraines
5) needing to plan around uncomfortable digestive issues
The Roadmap to Renewed Health is built around investigating functional health and the physiology of your health systems. I look broadly enough, in enough places, to find the pieces that may explain what's going on, and then deeply enough to understand what they mean to your ability to function as you must to live your life.
You can't address what you hasn’t been identified.
We need to find out what's going on. Then do something about it.
There’s a lot a stake.
The state of your health makes everything that’s in your life, possible.
Your ability to work.
Your income.
Your role in your family and extended family.
Your independence.
The career or business you’ve built.
The life you’ve built around all of it.
Hi, I’m Ellen Nicholas, the founder and sole practitioner of Roots & Wings for Renewed Health.
I’m a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and a Board-Certified Holistic Health Practitioner. My work is grounded in investigating people’s declining head broadly — looking for the things causing it to decline.
As a systems thinker I never stop thinking about why things are the way they are, particularly in the arena of a poorly functioning body. Why is it operating this way? If we stop this circumstance, will health and function revert. If we add or remove a particular input (i.e. a specific supplement, more protein, less protein, more activity, less activity), will it improve the body’s ability to function.
I’m not exactly a nerd, but if something were new to me, I would pretend I was till I found the answers to the puzzle.
I look broadly. I collect clues. I look for connections. I pay attention to what has changed, what came before it, what may be contributing now, and sometimes what no one has thought to ask about before.
And because I know how much can be at stake while you're trying to get better, I believe in being deeply proactive while also being fiercely protective and careful of your energy and ability to function day to day.
That stance informs my judgement and decision-making throughout our work together. Improving your health matters. So does protecting your ability to live your life while we do it.
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Are We a Good Fit?
Our working together successfully requires that you be an active and observant participant in your health. It also requires a willingness to work within the pace and parameters that I set for our work together.
There may very well be times when I recommend a dosage that is less than what the bottle says to take.
I may recommend that we slow something down like particular activities.
We will always give your body time to show whether something is helpful or unhelpful before layering on other protocol components or before taking the next step.
When someone is already dealing with multiple significant symptoms — exhaustion, pain, brain fog, insomnia, digestive problems — adding new inputs requires caution. We need to know how your body responds to each new thing before adding anything else.
In this world, more isn't necessarily better, and faster isn't either.
Both can lead to a worsening of your body’s capacity and ability to function, and an increase in symptom flares. Possibly the creation of new ones. That can lead to you requiring more rest and recovery — which is exactly the opposite of our goal.
If your instinct is to double or triple a dose, accelerate the protocol schedule, add several things at once when requested to wait three to five days in-between, or push through an extreme lack of energy or pain, because you want results faster, we may not be a good fit.
Part of what you're hiring me for is not only for getting answers from the assessment, but also about developing potentially restorative protocols. Pace, sequencing, and protecting your capacity are an important part of that.
If we wind up working together, you are ALWAYS welcome to ask for help with strategies to deal with abnormal circumstances that create increased demand on your capacity short term. Emergencies that require your getting to a funeral, getting to a family member in a hospital, a wedding you must attend out of town.
There will be times when life requires you to push beyond what would otherwise be wise. We can work together to help you manage those circumstances. But when there is a choice, pushing through exhaustion, significant pain, or other warning signs in order to get more done or try to get better faster, is not how we work.
The reason is simple: I can’t guarantee what results our work together will produce. But I do know that pushing harder, doing more faster than the body is ready for, or haphazardly adding more inputs can take your health in exactly the wrong direction, rather than where you want to go.
My Vision for our Work Together
That we find the answers you need to change the downward trajectory of your health
— so you don’t lose more ground.
That we identify and begin addressing the factors contributing to the changes in your health, while protecting the capacity you have now and working to rebuild what has begun to slip.
That we introduce interventions carefully, sequentially, and at a pace your body can handle. We make changes, watch how you respond, and adjust as needed — so improving your health doesn’t require putting the rest of your life on hold.
And ultimately, that we do more than interrupt a decline. We work to create the conditions that support your body’s capacity for restoration, greater resilience, and the possibility of regaining ground.
Roadmap for Renewed Health:
Investigation Phase
At Roots & Wings, looking harder, broader, and deeper isn't what we do after you get worse. It's where we start.
So where do we start? By investigating broadly — and digging deep when a closer look is warranted.
The Roadmap to Renewed Health Program is built around two things:
First, you, your clinical presentation of symptoms, and rebuilding your health foundations for improved health and ability to function in your daily life.
Second, the Roots & Wings Restorative Health Framework, our proprietary methodology for investigating functional health and physiology and guiding the work we do to help you renew your health.
It is a complex investigation. On purpose… We can do so because insurance companies are not able to exert the kind of influence that stops investigation into symptoms that don’t have a full-blown diagnosis. The bad news is that insurance does NOT pay for our work.
The Restorative Health Framework was developed specifically for investigating complex chronic illness — which involves multiple symptoms and body systems, with numerous potential contributing or causative factors.
In the Roadmap for Renewed Health, we use the same foundational investigative process that undergirds our work with people who have complex chronic illness.
The difference is that in the Roadmap for Renewed Health we are using it earlier in the illness process for people with emergent symptoms. Long before multiple symptoms, conditions, and systems have had years to develop into a long-term chronic health pattern.
We systematically investigate more than 40 areas known to affect health, physiology, and function for the same reason. So that years do not go by allowing things to develop into long-term complex or chronic health patterns.
How does the Roots & Wings Systems & Symptom Assessment Work?
This rigorous assessment process is comprised of:
1. a 75-minute initial appointment
2. an in-depth health history and symptomatology
3. a comprehensive written assessment utilizing multiple assessment and screening tools
4. a review of existing medical records and laboratory work
5. functional laboratory testing as useful and relevant
6. an initial analysis and integration of the information gathered through your appointment, health history, assessment, screening tools, medical information, and available test results
7. a Preliminary Findings & Recommendations based on the information available before functional laboratory results are received
8. Final analysis and integration, incorporating functional laboratory findings into what we have already learned, followed by your final written report and recommendations
Roadmap to Renewed Health: Renewal Phase
Once the assessment is complete and we have our findings,
our focus shifts from investigation to renewal.
We went looking for answers. We found them.
We looked broadly and dug deep. We turned over lots of stones.
We will have a clearer understanding of what’s driving your symptoms.
Have a better understanding of what’s slowing you down.
Know what’s interfering with your ability to function in your daily life.
Understand what’s adversely impacting your health — not just today but your future health too.
What needed to be identified has been identified. Now we can begin to address it.
With that information, we can develop targeted strategies for renewal — strategies based on what we’ve learned about you — not guesswork.
We can’t know exactly how the trajectory of your health will change.
What we can do is educate you on your physiology after we have the data from the complex investigation that is your completed assessment.
Then we can teach you the tools and evidence-based health and lifestyle strategies that can potentially move your physiology toward better functioning in your daily life.
Everyone’s biology and physiology is different because of their genetics, lifestyle choices, and ongoing exposures. So what works for a hundred other people may or may not work for you.
Fortunately, we have dozens of strategies and tools in our tool belt — and the information we’ve gathered helps us determine which ones may be right for you.
Proactivity 101:
Knowing when you better act.
Sooner rather than later.
To avoid negative consequences.
Long before I became a health practitioner, I had a whole other life. My pre-illness life.
I am passionate about helping people protect the life that good health makes possible.
My story is why.
When I speak about having a lot at stake, unfortunately for me, it isn't theoretical.
I may use the word “health”, but what I’m really talking about is your ability to work and earn — and the financial security that comes with it.
My goal isn't to scare the heck out of you.
Primarily, I work with people who have complex chronic illness.
But I also help people who have symptoms that interfere with their lives. They don’t know why and want answers so they can end the interference.
My Story…
I had a degree in business and finance and spent 15 years in real estate and mortgage banking. I had built a successful career with significant earning potential. Then my health deteriorated to the point that continuing to get to and do the work became impossible.
When my health improved enough for me to return to banking, I spent two years trying to get back into the industry. I couldn’t. Being out of the workforce for a few years because of illness had changed how prospective employers saw me. The career I had worked to build was simply no longer available to me.
But I still needed to earn a living. If I was going to continue working, I had to find another way.
I built part-time businesses that gave me control over when and how I worked. First, operating a bed-and-breakfast and then a gluten-free farmers market business in the Hudson Valley.
Self-employment gave me a way to keep working, but it didn’t change that I needed to work limited hours and as a result, have a significantly lower income than I would have had were I able to work a 40-hour week.
Declining health cost me a 15-year career and years of real income I could never get back.
The consequences went far beyond my career. They affected my financial security, my family, my lifestyle, my ability to get health insurance, my relationships, and ultimately, my retirement income.
When my health began unraveling decades ago, much of what we know today simply wasn't known yet. Many of the conditions, contributing factors, tests, research, and connections that can be investigated today weren't known or accessible then.
In approximately 1997, I waited five months to see a rheumatologist moving into our community. I brought him a written history of my symptoms. He looked it over, confirmed my fibromyalgia diagnosis and, when I asked how he could know without really examining me, told me simply that I was “a train wreck.” I couldn't argue with him. I was.
There was no investigation into why my health had deteriorated so dramatically and no meaningful plan for what I could do about it.
Fortunately, for someone experiencing symptoms today that are interfering with their life, considerably more is known. We also have laboratory testing, research, and other investigative tools that can help us look for factors that once would have been difficult—or impossible—to identify.
That's where the Roadmap to Renewed Health comes in.
My purpose is to help you change the trajectory — and avoid the train wreck you sense may be coming.
Our goals are straightforward:
— Complete recovery wherever possible
— Better management of any chronic illness to minimize disruption and allow you to participate more fully in your life
— Provide sequenced rather than stacked strategies designed to reduce symptoms and improve your health without doing too much, too quickly — potentially jeopardizing your ability to keep working
My Vision for You
That protecting and improving your health protects the life your health makes possible.
Enough energy left after work to make dinner — and a Saturday that doesn’t have to be spent recovering from Friday.
The capacity to care for your children, help an aging parent, play with your grandchildren, and be present for the people you love.
Going to the gym. Playing pickup basketball at 5:00 in the morning at the Y with the same people you’ve played with for years. Working in your garden. Seeing your friends. Going to Sunday dinner — even when it’s a pain in the neck. Hey, it’s family.
Being able to keep doing the work you value and earning the income that supports the life you’ve built.
Travel. The house. The boat. The hobbies. The plans. Whatever you’ve worked for and whatever makes your particular life yours.
Being able to make plans without first calculating what they’re going to cost you physically.
And coming away from our work understanding more about your own body and what it needs — better equipped to be a proactive manager of your health for the years ahead.
You know something is wrong.
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You're proactive by nature.
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You're not the type to wait months to "wait and see".
✳︎
You want an exhaustive assessment now.
✳︎
The Roadmap to Renewed Health is exactly that.
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Schedule now.
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You know something is wrong. ✳︎ You're proactive by nature. ✳︎ You're not the type to wait months to "wait and see". ✳︎ You want an exhaustive assessment now. ✳︎ The Roadmap to Renewed Health is exactly that. * Schedule now. *
Program and Investment
The Roadmap to Renewed Health — Initial 90 Days | $2,495 plus cost of functional lab testing
The first 90 days give us time to complete the assessment and investigation, use what we learn to develop a strategy, begin putting that strategy into place, and see how your body responds.
Throughout the program, you'll also have access to our private Facebook group, including twice-weekly open hours when you can check in if questions or concerns come up between appointments.
At the end of 90 days, we reassess.
Some people may be ready to continue largely on their own or schedule individual consultations as needed at $225 per appointment. Others may benefit from another 90 days of structured support.
Additional 90 Days of Structured Support | $1,500
This includes continued implementation and adjustment of your strategy, scheduled follow-up appointments, and continued access to the private Facebook group and twice-weekly open hours.
At the end of 90 days we reassess both where you stand and your preferences for continuing. It is entirely possible you will need more than 90 days if you are dealing with thorny health issues or your body is particularly sensitive and needs to move slowly from working on one issue to another.
There are several ways to begin working with
Roots & Wings for Renewed Health.
Schedule an initial consultation with me.
Up to 45- to 75-minute appointment
$175
If you would like to begin with the Roots & Wings Systems and Symptom Assessment, initiate the paperwork portion here.
Schedule the first of two assessment appointments here.
$875
Reduced-fee options are available for a limited number of clients per quarter with documented financial need. Eligibility is based on the client’s own financial circumstances.
Ellen offers these spaces as a way of paying forward the help others extended to her during years when illness severely limited her own resources. Feel free to inquire for details.
Indicate your intent to join the Roadmap for Renewed Health here.
Schedule your first Roadmap appointment here.
Initial 90 days
$2,495
Once you have chosen your starting point, I’ll send you a welcome email with our Terms of Service Agreement and simple instructions for what comes next. Once the agreement is signed and payment is received we can get started.