Self'ish' Health Hormone Wellness Consult
Self'ish' Health · Hormone Wellness Consult · Virtual
One conversation.
A written plan.
A woman who finally knows what her body is doing.
Ninety minutes with Lara Dilkes, L.Ac. MSAOM FNLP, by video, from wherever you are, ending with a customized wellness roadmap in your inbox.
Save my spot90 Minutes·One to One·Virtual, From Anywhere
To be self’ish’ is to support, sustain, love and understand your own self well enough that there’s something left in you to give.
You tend your own well-being, your capacity and your strength first, because everything else you do runs on them.
The women I see have spent years putting themselves last and calling it love. Tending yourself is what lets you show up in your life as yourself, rather than as the worn-out stand-in you’ve been sending in your place.
Where you are right now
You're not imagining
any of this.
You're wiped out by two in the afternoon and wide awake at three in the morning. Your cycle has started doing things it never used to do, showing up early, showing up heavy, skipping a month and then coming back with opinions. You're hot at night, foggy in meetings, and shorter with the people you love than you want to be. The exercise that used to work either drains you for two days or no longer feels like enough, and you can't find the middle.
You've tried a new supplement, a stricter eating window, an earlier bedtime, and none of it has held past a week or two. Someone has told you this is normal for your age, someone else has told you your labs came back fine, and both of those sentences left you standing exactly where you were. Underneath it sits the same thought at three in the morning:
I just can't get consistent. I don't know where to start. I need someone I trust to tell me what to do.
What changes
What it feels like when
the picture finally makes sense.
Imagine opening your calendar on a Tuesday and knowing the three things you're working on this month, and why each one is on the list. Your afternoon crash has a name now, so you read it as information about your blood sugar and your cortisol instead of reading it as something wrong with you. You know which foods steady you and which ones quietly cost you, because we looked at your sleep, your cycle, your digestion, your food and your labs as one connected picture.
When your period does something strange in March, you understand what it's telling you instead of lying awake inventing worst cases. You've found the movement that fits the body you have this year, so exercise stops being a puzzle with no right answer. The four supplements in your cupboard that someone on the internet recommended are either explained or retired, and whatever you keep taking, you can say out loud why you're taking it.
Six weeks from now you're not starting over again, you're adjusting something that's already working. That's a very different way to live inside your own body, and it starts with one person looking at all of it at once.
Why nothing has stuck
Nothing has worked because
nobody has looked at the whole thing.
For years you've blamed your own consistency. You've told yourself that if you could just be more disciplined, more organized, better at sticking to things, your body would settle down. That was never the real problem, and I can tell you that from both sides of the treatment table.
A woman comes into my practice with six symptoms that have each been handled separately, by different people, at different appointments, over about four years. The sleep went to one provider, the digestion to another, the mood to a third, and the cycle changes got filed under normal for your age and left there. Your endocrine system doesn't work in those categories. Estrogen and progesterone don't only run your cycle, they shape your sleep architecture, your serotonin and dopamine signaling, your insulin sensitivity, your gut motility, and how much cortisol you're making before your feet hit the floor.
When those hormones start swinging in perimenopause, and they swing rather than simply dropping off, every one of those systems feels it. Six separate problems is usually one shift showing up in six places. Standard bloodwork is built to catch disease, which matters enormously and is different work from catching dysfunction, so your labs can sit inside the normal range while you feel nothing like yourself. You've been handed fragments and asked to build a plan out of them, which isn't a fair thing to ask of anyone.
My own version of this
Licensed Acupuncturist · Herbalist · Functional Nutrition Practitioner · Two Decades of Clinical Practice
I was forty six when I first noticed something was off, although I only recognized it as a beginning much later. My emotions had more edge than they used to, I was more irritable, I was more tired, and I was spending a strange amount of energy trying to work out why I felt the way I felt.
About two years after that, my periods stopped being anything I could plan around. They came late, then early, then heavier, then longer, and the only reliable thing about them was that nothing was reliable. Over roughly three and a half years I slowly put on twenty pounds, and my joints started aching in the mornings. Exercise turned into a puzzle I couldn't solve, because yoga on its own no longer felt like enough and a HIIT class left me flattened for two days. I felt zero like myself, which is a sentence I have since heard from a great many women in my treatment room.
This is the part I want you to hear. I'm a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist with two decades of clinical practice, with functional nutrition training on top of that, and I write herbal formulas for a living. I wrote myself formula after formula and bought every supplement I could justify, and I still couldn't pin it down, because the picture kept changing underneath me. If it took me that long from the inside, with all of that training, then whatever you've been calling a willpower problem was never a willpower problem.
What I learned is that this stage of life is not a thing you solve once and then keep. You make peace with the chaos, you find what works in the part of it you're standing in, and you build yourself a real-life toolbox you can actually reach for. Mine has loving my body while it changes shape, apologizing to my children when I've raged at them, letting myself go into the closet and cry for twenty minutes afterward, and refusing to add self-criticism on top of a body that's already working hard. Some days it also involves wanting a rage room, which I have still not booked.
If you drink SuperCube in the mornings, you already know how I think, because I formulated it for the women in my treatment room years before I sold a single jar of it. This consult is that same thinking, pointed at you specifically, for ninety minutes.
That toolbox is the work we do together. We build yours, for the version of the chaos you're actually standing in right now, and you leave with it written down.
The ninety minutes
What actually happens
in the session.
One to one, over video, which means you can do it from your kitchen table in Ohio or your office in Lisbon without going anywhere near Portland. There's no acupuncture in this session and no physical exam. It runs in five parts, in this order, and it takes ninety minutes because thirty wouldn't be honest.
We go through sleep, cycle, digestion, food and any labs you have, in detail. I ask what time you wake, what your energy does across a day, what your cycle has been doing this past year, how your digestion behaves under stress, and what you've already tried. You won't be rushed, and you won't have to squeeze four years of symptoms into the last five minutes.
I look at your symptoms and your daily life through a functional lens and show you where they connect. This is usually the part where women exhale, because the thing that felt like six separate failures turns out to be one system under strain, and you can finally see it laid out.
I teach you how your hormones and your stress response are working right now. No seesaw metaphor, the actual physiology, at whatever depth you want it. You leave understanding your own body well enough to make decisions without me in the room.
We work out the food, lifestyle and supplement changes that fit your real life, your real budget and your real willingness. A plan you won't follow wastes both our time, so we build one you will.
If further testing would answer a real question, I'll tell you which test and what it would show you, whether that's bloodwork, stool testing or a food sensitivity panel. This part is optional, and if what you already have is enough to work from, I'll say so.
What you leave holding
Your toolbox,
written down.
Written up and emailed after the session. You won't be scrambling to take notes while I talk, and it's still there in six weeks when you want to check what we agreed on. This is the piece most people underestimate, and it's the reason you can act on this consult rather than just feel good after it.
- Ninety minutes of one to one time with me, over video, from anywhere. Long enough to tell the whole story once, to one person, and have it actually understood.
- A full health intake across sleep, cycle, digestion, nutrition and the labs you already have, so nothing gets left in a different appointment.
- A symptom and lifestyle assessment through a functional lens, which is where six problems turn back into one picture.
- Personalized nutrition, lifestyle and supplement recommendations, built for your body rather than for women your age in general.
- Education on hormone balance and your stress response, at the depth you want it, so you can make your own calls afterward.
- Optional functional lab recommendations, bloodwork, stool or food sensitivity testing, where they'd genuinely add something and not before.
What my clients say
“Working with Lara for my Self'ish' Health Hormone Consult was such a supportive and helpful experience. I came to her looking for support with perimenopause, hormonal changes, and some stubborn digestive issues, including trying to get my poop back on track!”
“Working with Lara has helped me make sense of what's going on without feeling like I need to overhaul my entire life. Lara is incredibly knowledgeable, down-to-earth, and easy to talk to about all the weird things that come with this season of being a woman. Highly recommend!”
“I did not receive any real guidance or information from my doctor as to how I should handle this. My calls with Lara were enormously helpful to me. I know she cares deeply for the health of her clients, and I felt very reassured after our conversations that I would be able to move forward.”
“Lara is extremely knowledgeable in a wide range of topics. I trust her advice and guidance implicitly. She cares about her clients and their health and well-being. I recommend her without reservation.”
“I have worked with Lara for close to a decade. When we first started working together, I was in menopause and still experiencing many of the symptoms: hot flashes, dysregulated sleep, weight gain, brain fog, the works.”
“Lara provided wise counsel. Her steady reassurance that things in my life would surely improve was invaluable. I don't know of any other provider who is willing to treat you and listen like Lara does. I cannot recommend Lara enough. I am truly blessed to have her on my care team.”
Honestly
Who this is for,
and who it isn't.
- Your hormones have gone sideways, whether that's PMS, perimenopause, menopause, or something in between that nobody has named yet.
- Your cycle, your sleep, your energy or your mood have changed, and you can't work out why.
- You've been told your labs are normal while you keep feeling unwell.
- You're on hormone replacement therapy already and you want the rest of the picture supported properly alongside it.
- You've decided against hormone replacement therapy, or you can't take it, and you want to know what else is actually available to you.
- You're willing to change some things, and you want to know which ones are worth the effort before you spend it.
- You live nowhere near Portland, because this is virtual and always has been.
- You already trust how I think about bodies, and you want that thinking pointed at yours.
- You want a prescription. I don't prescribe hormones, and this consult isn't a route to an HRT script.
- You want a diagnosis, or a medical condition ruled out, which is work that belongs with your physician.
- You have an urgent or acute medical concern, in which case please call your provider rather than booking this.
- You want a protocol handed to you that you never have to think about again, because this works by you understanding what you're doing.
- You want a result guaranteed by a date. I won't promise you one, and I'd be careful of anyone who does.
The consult
Ninety Minutes · Virtual · Roadmap Included
One to one, by video, wherever you are, including your customized wellness roadmap emailed after the session. Follow-up consults are $140 for sixty minutes, also virtual, for checking in, seeing how your body has responded and adjusting the plan. Most women book a follow-up once they've had time to work with the roadmap, and there's nothing to commit to now.
Save my spotBefore you book
The questions
I actually get asked.
Does this replace my doctor?
No, and I wouldn't want it to. I don't prescribe, I don't diagnose, and I'm not competing with your physician or your HRT prescriber. I work alongside them, on the parts a twelve minute appointment can't reach, which is food, sleep, stress physiology, digestion and the daily patterns sitting underneath your symptoms. Women on hormone replacement and women who've chosen against it both belong here, for different reasons. If anything I see suggests you need a medical workup, I'll tell you plainly and send you back to your provider with something specific to ask for.
Do I need labs before we meet?
You don't need anything in hand to book. Bring whatever you have, including work your doctor ran in the last year or two, and we'll use it. If you've never had bloodwork we still have ninety minutes of history to work with, and that's a great deal of information. Where more testing would answer a real question I'll recommend it during the session, and any lab cost sits outside the $240 and stays your decision.
Will you just try to sell me supplements?
That's a fair thing to be suspicious about, and the answer is no. The $240 buys my time and my thinking, and that's the whole transaction. Supplements come up only where they earn their place. I'll tell you honestly when something you're already taking is doing very little, and I'm as likely to take three things off your list as add one. Some of what I suggest is available through Lala's Wellness and plenty of it isn't, because the recommendation follows what you need rather than what I happen to stock.
Is ninety minutes really enough?
For a first proper look at the whole picture, yes, and that's why it's ninety rather than thirty. You leave with a written roadmap and a clear sense of what you're doing first. What ninety minutes can't do is watch how your body responds over time, which is what the $140 follow-up is for. Plenty of women do the first consult, work with the plan for six to eight weeks, then come back once to adjust it.
I've tried online health help before and been disappointed. How is this different?
I understand the hesitation, so here are the concrete differences rather than a reassurance. You're talking with a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist and functional nutrition practitioner with two decades of clinical practice. I'm the only person you'll deal with, so nobody hands you off to a junior coach after you pay. There's no algorithm writing your plan and no single protocol I run everyone through. You get ninety minutes of real conversation and a roadmap written for you, which lands in your inbox where you can hold me to it. If what you tried before was a quiz, a generic PDF and a supplement bundle, this is a different animal.
Is it really virtual, even though you're in Portland?
Yes, entirely. The consult happens over video and there's no in-person component, so where you live has no bearing on it. My acupuncture practice is in Portland, and this consult was built to reach the women who will never sit on my treatment table.
Come and get
a proper look.
If you've read this far, some part of you already knows that how you're feeling deserves more than another guess. Ninety minutes, from wherever you are, one person looking at all of it at once, and your toolbox written down and waiting in your inbox afterward.
Save my spotSelf'ish' Health Hormone Wellness Consult, New Patient · $240, ninety minutes, virtual by video. Follow-up consults $140, sixty minutes. This consult is wellness education and functional nutrition support. It does not diagnose, treat or cure any medical condition, and it does not take the place of care from your own physician. Individual experiences vary and are not a promise of results.