The complexity of long-term chronic illness calls for both a broad and an in-depth investigation.
Our assessments do both.
The Angel Oak,
John's Island, Charleston, SC
You Have Multiple Persistent Symptoms. You Need to Know Why.
Something is contributing to those symptoms or allowing them to persist.
Our job is to investigate what that is.
Sometimes symptoms are associated with nutrient deficiencies, hormonal or metabolic changes, disrupted sleep, digestive dysfunction, past injuries, or structural problems.
Sometimes there is a history of Lyme disease or other tick-borne infections, mold exposure, viral illness, chemical or toxic exposures, or other environmental factors.
Sometimes medications, diet, inadequate recovery, chronic stress physiology, or previous treatments are part of the picture.
And sometimes several factors are operating at the same time.
That is why we investigate broadly.
Roots & Wings offers two assessments, designed for people at different stages of declining health and loss of function.
Two Assessments. Two Different Starting Points.
The Roots & Wings Emerging Symptoms Assessment
The Emerging Symptoms Assessment is designed for people whose health has changed relatively recently.
You may have developed multiple or persistent symptoms over a period of months. You may not feel like yourself. Your energy, sleep, digestion, pain level, cognitive function, resilience, or ability to recover may have changed.
But for the most part, you are still managing your life.
You may still be working, caring for your family, managing your household, exercising, traveling, or participating in the things that matter to you—even if doing those things has become more difficult.
This assessment is designed to investigate what may be contributing to those changes before declining health and function become more established.
The Roots & Wings Systems & Symptoms Assessment
The Systems & Symptoms Assessment is designed for people with longer-standing, more complex health problems that are substantially affecting health, function, or quality of life.
You may have many symptoms. You may already have one or several diagnoses. You may have seen multiple practitioners, undergone testing, tried treatments or protocols, and still not have the improvement you were looking for.
Some people at this stage are still working and managing most aspects of their lives.
Others have experienced substantial loss of function and may be working less, leaving home less, or spending much of their time at home.
The greater the complexity, the more important it becomes to investigate both broadly and in depth.
That is what the Systems & Symptoms Assessment is designed to do.
The Roots & Wings Approach to Investigating Complex Health When Lots of
Symptoms are in Play.
Whenever we are in the investigative process, we operate from our Restorative Health Framework™.
So where do we start? At the beginning.
At Roots & Wings, that means we start with one of our assessments. gathering the information we need to determine what is going on in your body. We accomplish that through one of the two assessments we offer.
For both assessments, we systematically investigate approximately 50 areas that may be affecting your health and physiology.
We do that for every client because we want to make sure we've covered the bases.
Some areas will prove relevant. Some won't. Some will raise questions that deserve a closer look.
We investigate broadly. We investigate in depth. And where the findings warrant it, we go even deeper—or recommend appropriate ways for you to investigate further.
Roots & Wings is a functional health and wellness practice, not a medical practice. Our work focuses on physiology, function and capacity. We do not diagnose, treat, or manage disease or provide medical care.
When information uncovered during an assessment indicates that medical evaluation, diagnosis, or treatment may be needed, we will recommend that you seek appropriate care from a licensed medical provider. Some health conditions or circumstances may also be outside the scope of our practice and require medical or other specialized care.
So, What Do We Actually Look At?
Quite a lot.
Naturally, when we're patients or clients dealing with complex chronic illness, we focus on the symptoms causing us the most trouble—chronic pain, exhaustion, inability to sleep, brain fog. They're so obvious and intrusive.
But there may be literally dozens of other symptoms, changes, and seemingly unrelated problems that have slipped under the radar, that we learned to live with, and that we never imagined were relevant to the bigger problems we were trying to solve.
After a long 27 years of complex chronic illness, I learned that feeling better required looking beyond the obvious. That requires a new lens when reviewing information.
Things that eventually mattered to my own health—in pretty important ways—were things I had never even heard of. Four years ago, a practitioner I had only recently begun working with, brought forward findings of two conditions that came out of her investigation into my health. With the newfound knowledge and new strategies, they were profoundly life-changing.
And I'm still learning. Because I never stop looking.
More recently, a different practitioner helped me recognize that an underlying connective-tissue disorder explains physical problems I've experienced since elementary school —and gave me a new way to understand much of my health history. And be more proactive and self-protective.
You don't know what you don't know. If you don't know because so much is below your conscious awareness, neither do we. Yet.
This Is What We Do.
We don’t base our investigation on your existing diagnoses, a few of your most troublesome symptoms, or what someone else has already found. We’re not here just to confirm what is already known. If you haven’t gotten better with the knowledge you have, I believe there is more to be found.
OR, a yet-to-be-determined, better executed strategy to remediate your physiology, but that’s a story for later….
Every assessment I perform looks across the full range of things I know to consider in complex chronic illness. Much of that came from my personal, lived experience. Some comes from my constant researching mode.
Some things will apply to you. Some won't. Some will confirm what you already know. And some may be things no one has thought to look for yet.
Nothing we find is too small to matter. It may stand alone, or it may lead us somewhere we didn't know to look. We won't know until we investigate.
Think about finding one mouse in your basement. One mouse isn't a catastrophe. But you don't ignore it because it's only one mouse. You look for how it got there. What you find may be nothing more than an open door—or it may reveal an opening you didn't know was there.
We approach your health the same way. We look thoroughly enough to find what might otherwise be missed.
We gather the information first. Then we analyze what we find.
Where the information warrants it, we go deeper. And when what we find there warrants it, we go deeper still.
We don't decide what's relevant before we look.
There is no magic bullet. If you've been chronically ill for a long time, we're unlikely to find one thing that explains everything or one intervention that fixes everything.
What we are looking for, within the limits of my knowledge, is everything we can reasonably identify that may be affecting your health, capacity, and function.
And yes, we look at the fundamentals—blood sugar, insulin resistance, sleep, nutrition, movement.
But we don't stop there.
We won’t list all of them here but they include the following:
Digestive and gastrointestinal function
Hormonal and metabolic function
Energy production and regulation
Immune and inflammatory patterns
Nervous-system and stress physiology
Sleep and recovery
Nutrition and dietary patterns
Movement, activity, and current functional capacity
Infection history
Environmental and toxic exposures
Structural and connective-tissue considerations
Current medications and supplementation
Previous treatments, interventions, and health history
What Does Our Structured Assessment
Take Into Consideration?
Every Assessment systematically looks across approximately 50 areas that may be affecting your health and physiology.
Why so many? Because one area alone can be associated with 38 different symptoms. When multiple areas are involved, the picture becomes complicated very quickly.
If you already have a practitioner or medical doctor who is investigating your health this broadly, you do not need this assessment.
What’s Included in Your Assessment?
What Do You Get?
This is a complete, standalone assessment. There is not a requirement to enter an ongoing Roots & Wings program.
What it Looks Like:
Comprehensive health history intake and structured assessment materials
Two individual appointments up to 75 minutes with Ellen Nicholas
Practitioner-initiated telephone calls, as needed, to further my understanding of information you have provided while completing the assessment documents
Review of up to five relevant existing labs and health information you provide
My independent case analysis and synthesis
Preliminary written Assessment report, plus an amended report after with functional lab testing finding as they become available
Preliminary recommendations and next steps
Recommendations for additional laboratory testing, medical evaluation, or deeper investigation when the findings indicate that more information would be useful
A review session in which we go through the assessment and report together
Your report is yours.
You may take what you learn and move forward independently, share it with another practitioner, or choose to continue working with Roots & Wings.
Functional laboratory testing, when recommended and agreed upon, is additional.
This is a complete, standalone assessment—not a requirement to enter an ongoing Roots & Wings program.
If you choose to continue with Roots & Wings,
how would that work?
The Assessment gives us a baseline: what we know, what we've ruled out, what still warrants investigation, and where there appear to be reasonable opportunities to improve function.
If you choose to continue working with Roots & Wings, that's when assessment becomes strategy.
Depending on your situation, and in combination with me, the next decision would be whether to enroll in:
The Roadmap to Renewed Health,
The Restorative Health and Reintegration Program
Or work together on a consultation basis.
Our methodology will always be to strategize to effect change - while being cautious to protect current capacity first. Build from there on whatever timeline works best for you, your budget, and your particular physiology.
What Can You Expect This
Assessment to Accomplish?
Information. Lots of it. Some or much of it new to you.
The purpose of this Assessment is to investigate broadly and deeply. And when something turns up, we dig more deeply.
All of that information allows us to see the big picture of what is going on in your body.
Think of your health as a puzzle. When we begin, we don't know whether yours has 24 pieces, 100 pieces, 500 pieces, or even 1,000. We don't know which pieces we'll find, which will turn out to be particularly important, or which will lead us to still more pieces.
By the time we're finished, you should have a much better understanding of the size and complexity of your puzzle.
Not every piece of information we uncover will be significant.
Some things we discover will be only mildly significant. Individually, the findings may not seem like much. But when multiple findings are acted on, their combined effect may add up to a meaningful improvement in symptoms, function and capacity.
Some pieces may be somewhat significant and lead to deeper investigation or functional lab testing. Celiac disease is one example. It is one of the conditions you will be screened for as part of this assessment. Years ago, I recognized the possibility of celiac disease in my husband when neither his internist nor his endocrinologist had. Medical testing took it from there.
And some pieces can be life-changing. That’s exactly what happened to me four years ago, when a new-to-me practitioner discovered something that ultimately made it so I am no longer a chronic pain patient.
The information itself didn’t change my health. It gave me something I could act on.
The outcome of this Assessment is information. What ultimately happens to your health depends upon what that information reveals, what is done with it afterward, and how your individual body responds.
Will Everyone Find This Assessment
Equally Worthwhile?
I never forget that people are all bio-individuals with different genetic predispositions; different exposures to infections, microbes, heavy metals, chemicals, and molds; and different capacities to respond to those factors for a variety of reasons.
For those reasons, and based on intuition and experience, I project that I will not find anything really valuable for 10–15% of people who take the assessment. It’s not impossible that, after years of searching, they already have a lot of the information I might uncover. What they need may lie outside my knowledge and scope. They may require highly specialized medical investigation at a place like the Mayo Clinic. Or results may remain elusive despite my best efforts.
At the other end of the bell-shaped curve, I project that there will be 15%-30% of people who take the assessment for whom we uncover very significant — perhaps even life-changing information.
Between the two endpoints of the curve are people who will uncover a wide range of new-to-them information and discoveries. How significant that information proves to be will be different for every person, because every person brings a different history, physiology, and puzzle, as well as their access to care locally and the depth of prior investigation.
I can't promise what we will find. But this Assessment isn’t built around the handful of things most likely to matter for the largest number of people. We are investigating you. What we look at is determined by your history, your symptoms, your records, and what we discover as we go.
I don't have a magic wand. If I did, I'd use it. I'd make you feel better, give you back your capacity, and send you out to live the life you want to live.
But I can’t do that.
What I can do is bring everything I've learned over three decades of lived experience and from working with dozens of practitioners, everything I know to look for, and applying my systems-thinking lens to the investigation of your health — and a commitment to bring all of it to your Assessment.
That's what I can do for you.
And I will give it my very best.
Choose the Assessment That Describes Your Needs
Assessment Option 1
Roots & Wings
Systems & Symptom Assessment - $875
For people with long-standing, complex health concerns involving multiple persistent symptoms, diagnoses, physiological systems, or significant changes in health and function.
The Systems & Symptom Assessment is a complete, stand-alone service. There is no requirement to continue into a Roots & Wings program.
Functional laboratory testing, when recommended and agreed upon, is additional.
Start Your Systems & Symptom Assessment
Assessment Option 2
Roots & Wings
Emerging Symptoms Assessment - $875
For people experiencing declining health, or haven’t recovered from an illness, who are struggling to maintain their usual work, family responsibilities, activities, and daily life.
The Emerging Symptoms Assessment is a complete, stand-alone service. There is no requirement to continue into a Roots & Wings program.
Functional laboratory testing, when recommended and agreed upon, is additional.
Start Your Emerging Symptoms Assessment