Kara’s Story

Kara spent an entire year making excuses for her toddler’s extreme behaviors, aggression, and lack of speech until finally, she could no longer deny the obvious; something was terribly wrong. In December 2005, Kara was told her son had Autism. She had never heard of Autism. She was told there was nothing she could do, and her directions were to take her son home, medicate him to silence his tantrums and make him more manageable, put him in speech therapy, love him, and try to keep him safe. She was unwilling to learn to quiet his behaviors. She knew her son’s behaviors were communication he was in unimaginable pain. In 2006, Kara was still on the dial-up internet and had a flip phone that did not send text messages. There was no hope, nevertheless, she decided to discover what there was she could do to ease his pain!

Kara quickly became a single mom, with 2 small boys. There were no local resources, so she began traveling great distances for health care professionals who were beginning to acknowledge, and address the underlying root causes creating the symptoms referred to as Autism. She discovered cranio-sacral and lymphatic drainage therapy, low inflammatory nutrition, supplements, throwing out his baby mattress, and all toxic home and personal products; all of these lifestyle modifications made sense to her. She later layered in vision, infrared sauna, and advanced medical interventions such as chelation, Lyme Disease protocol, mold exposure treatment, hyperbaric treatment, and orthodontics for his restricted airway.

She quickly learned the value of living this plan with her son. Kara feels better today in her mid 40’s than any other time she can remember. Therefore, she credits his Autism as a master teacher who appeared to force Kara to lead by example.

It took Kara 9 years of consistently and 100% committed to living their family’s evolving care plan for her son to surface. After 14 years, they have successfully and sustainably placed Autism into Remission. She has spent the past 7 years working with a variety of Functional Medicine Practitioners for the purpose to turn around and help more families and patients write and tell their story.

In 2002, Kara was recruited to work in a rural West Virginia health care clinic as a Community Health Outreach Worker (CHOW). This was before Health Coach was a term. While she was figuring out how to heal the root causes of her son’s Autism, Kara coached patients in the exam rooms while they waited for their provider. New River Health had doctor prescribed group coaching event called Help Yourself, and Kara created a chair yoga program for the clinic to offer exercise to those living with diabetes, chronic pain, and other diagnoses that limited their physical activity.  The chair yoga program became so successful that Kara was contracted by Marshall University. Thanks to Marshall University, Kara was able to create training materials and traveled throughout the Appalachian region, training healthcare professionals in her chair yoga program. She created an innovative prescription, allowing Help Yourself and the chair yoga program to become doctor prescribed.

When Kara and her boys moved back to her Ohio hometown in 2010, she was shocked that no one had heard about healing the root causes which create symptoms of Autism. Most had not even heard of gluten/dairy-free, or if they had, they had tried it and it “didn’t work”.

 

The closest Bio-Med doctor was two hours away, and was only offering his medical guidance. Kara, having worked in a variety of health care clinics, had the idea to create an Autism Recovery Clinic. She created a multi-disciplinary health care clinic, which included health coaching appointments, a doctor for medical interventions, structural integration therapies, mHBOT, and an infrared sauna. In addition to these, Kara’s unique philosophy was to work first with the parents. Cranial Sacral, massage, energy work, and community outreach programs were provided services to support parents through their healing process. Healing from Autism is more readily achieved when the entire family adopts the required diet and lifestyle changes. Kara designed her health care clinic and services based on this Family Care Plan philosophy.  

In October, 2013, Kara opened Integrated Connections. The clinic affectionately became known as ‘The Little Yellow House”. Her first patients were families with teenagers living with Autism, who had exhausted conventional and alternative therapies. Such profound results happened with these children that Dr. Nathan Morris, MD of Good Medicine in Oxford, Ohio heard about the Little Yellow House. He and his wife Annie drove the hour to Integrated Connections in order to meet Kara. Immediately, Dr. Morris could see the effectiveness of Kara’s unique model, And asked if he could be the medical provider to Kara’s clinic.

After two years, Kara asked Dr. Morris if she could join his practice. The Little Yellow House’s overhead and work demand were more than what Kara could reasonably sustain. Kara became the Clinical Coordinator at Good Medicine in August, 2015, and graduated with the first Functional Medicine Coaching Academy class in January, 2016. After graduation, Kara became a Course Facilitator/Practicum Supervisor for the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy.

Kara is now a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC), a Business Advisor, and the Business Integration Manager for PureGenomics powered by PureEncapsulations. Most recently, Kara has become the Executive Producer and co-host of the podcast, Good Medicine On The Go.