If you’ve ever known something wasn’t right with your health but couldn’t get anyone to listen, you’re going to relate to a lot of what we share today.
We’re sharing our health stories, the full version, from the beginning. Two very different journeys that shaped everything we do today. Body image, hormonal imbalances, steroids, burnout, fatigue, gut issues and years of sitting across from practitioners being told everything was normal when nothing about how we felt was ‘normal’.
Between the two of us, there were some wrong turns, a lot of money spent and some results that we couldn’t ignore. We’re sharing our lived experiences in the hope that it helps you trust your gut instincts and keep searching for the answers you deserve.
We’re not done with this conversation, not by a long way. But this is where it starts.
Where the Quick Fix Begun
For Adrian, it started with body image. He was a slight kid, 69 kilos stretched across a six-foot-one frame from about 16 to 20 and the insecurity that came with that shaped a lot of what followed.
Growing up in the era of Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, and Rambo, where big and strong was the image of what a man ‘should’ look like. So he did what a lot of young guys do. He looked for the quick fix. At 19, a cycle of steroids. It worked, the way quick fixes tend to work, until it didn’t.
The size came, the confidence came and then six or eight weeks later, it fell away just as fast, leaving another knock to work through.
“It wasn’t about being built to last back then. It was about chasing quick fixes for body size because that was going to fix the confidence.” – Adrian Addamo
The recreational drug use through the twenties came from the same place. Not addiction, but fitting in. Feeling less out of place in the social spaces where he felt uncomfortable. And eventually, the weight of all of it, the insecurity, the people pleasing, the hustle culture and the five hours of sleep he was calling discipline, caught up.
The turning point came in the most unglamorous way possible. Standing in a bathroom after a shower, towel on the floor, looking up into the mirror and genuinely not recognising the man looking back. Something shifted in that moment, quietly and completely. A decision got made and he didn’t look back.
What the Hormones Were Telling Him
From there, Adrian went looking for real answers. He found a strength coach and nutritionist who wouldn’t take him on until he cleaned up his lifestyle first, which turned out to be its own kind of accountability. And sitting with his first full hormone panel, the picture finally started to make sense.
What he learned from that panel is actually something most of us were never taught, and it’s more relevant than you might think. So here’s a quick breakdown, because it comes up in Kate’s story too.
The body is essentially a chemistry set and when one thing is out of balance, everything downstream feels it.
Cortisol, the stress hormone, affects energy, sleep, mood and yes, where the body stores weight. Chronically high cortisol tends to show up around the midsection. Years of pressure and poor sleep leave a mark that a good week of rest won’t fix.
Testosterone, when introduced artificially through steroids, doesn’t just disappear when you stop. The body converts the excess into estrogen, which creates its own set of problems including back fat and other symptoms most people never connect back to their hormones.
And estrogen dominance, which most people assume is purely a women’s issue, is far more common in men than anyone talks about. Plastics, processed foods and environmental toxins all contribute and most of us are carrying more than we realise.
We aren’t born this way. It’s a result of something learned so it can be unlearned. The body responds. It just needs the right conditions.
That framing changed everything. Not just the physical stuff, but the way of thinking about health altogether.
The Fatigue That Never Really Left
Kate’s story is a different kind of long.
It started in primary school. A kid who was always more tired than she should have been, prone to headaches that weren’t normal for a child. Growing up on a farm outside Toowoomba, getting on with it was just the normal way of life. When glandular fever hit at 17, she kept going anyway. Two hours on the bus each way and working on the farm in the afternoons. You just got on with it.
At 21, the wheels came off properly. Working 60 hours a week in the motor industry, still going out on weekends and running completely empty, she burnt out so severely that there was a whole month where getting out of bed wasn’t possible. A partner had to help her stand in the shower and wash her hair. Her legs had nothing to give.
That was the beginning of understanding something deeper was going on but understanding it and actually getting answers for it turned out to be two completely different things.
Years of Tests, Wrong Turns and Being Told Everything Was Fine
Through her twenties and thirties, the gut issues, heavy cycles, migraines and fatigue followed everywhere. Queensland to Melbourne and back again. Practitioners were seen. Tens of thousands spent on supplements and appointments and receiving some genuinely terrible advice, including one naturopath who recommended eating only vegetables for a month, after which things got significantly worse.
In August 2018, five months after getting married and with a brand new business just finding its feet, Kate was diagnosed with H. pylori – a bacterial infection in the gut. After years of searching for answers, the decision was made to take a strong course of antibiotics and clear it. They did the job and also wrecked the gut biome completely. Her cycle changed, weight shifted almost overnight, her body was struggling and there was still no clear answer as to why.
Estrogen dominance kept coming up in the research. Every symptom was there. One doctor said they don’t test for it, it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Another tested it and called it ‘normal’.
Normal, it turned out, was not the bar worth aiming for.
Eventually, after moving back to Queensland in 2020, Kate found naturopath Taylah Teschner and did the DUTCH test, a comprehensive dried urine hormone panel done at a specific point in the cycle that gives a much more complete picture of what’s actually going on hormonally than a standard blood test.
The results came back showing estrogen dominance at more than double what it should be. The worst case Taylah had ever seen! Levels that, left unchecked, edge toward breast cancer territory.
What Was Actually Going On
For anyone reading this who recognises some of what’s been described, heavy periods, cramps, migraines, weight that won’t shift, persistent fatigue and mood that feels out of your control, here’s what the picture looked like and why it matters.
Estrogen dominance happens when estrogen levels are disproportionately high relative to progesterone. It can come from the body producing too much, not clearing it efficiently, or progesterone being too low to balance things out. Environmental exposures, plastics, certain skincare products and processed foods, all play a role.
Progesterone is the calming, stabilising hormone. When it’s low, anxiety, poor sleep and mood instability tend to follow. In this case, levels were so low the body may not have been ovulating at all.
Cortisol was essentially flat-lined. No meaningful output at any point of the day. Years of stress, grief and pushing through had depleted everything to the point where there was nothing left to draw on. Showing up socially was a performance and the cost of it would be felt for days afterward.
This isn’t rare. It’s incredibly common and incredibly underdiagnosed. Kate’s mum had many of the same signs throughout her forties. A hysterectomy managed the symptoms but not the underlying hormonal picture. The excess estrogen continued unchecked and eventually became breast cancer. We lost her in March 2023.
Kate’s dad is currently navigating his own cancer journey. Prostate cancer is also hormone-related and DUTCH testing has become part of supporting his health through treatment.
We FINALLY Had Answers
Even after four years of working on hormones and finally getting levels to a healthy place, something still didn’t feel right. There was still heaviness, still fatigue, still something that couldn’t quite be accounted for.
A kinesiologist was the first to mention MTHFR, a genetic mutation that affects how the body processes and absorbs certain nutrients. Testing came back complex. Variants had been inherited from both parents.
In practical terms, it means the body doesn’t absorb vitamin A, B vitamins, vitamin C, D, E, magnesium or iron the way most people’s bodies do. Years of doing everything right, beef liver tablets, magnesium spray every night, iron supplements and it wasn’t being absorbed the way we thought. The gut issues, the slow recovery, the persistent inflammation, it all had a much deeper root than anyone had found until now.
“I remember sitting in that consult just holding back tears. Forty-two years later, I finally found out that I’m not crazy. I have had these issues all my life and now I know why.” – Kate Addamo
It’s still being worked through. But knowing there’s a reason, after all of this time, matters more than we can really put into words.
What We Know Now
Neither of us would choose to have done it the hard way but the hard way is what brought us here and what gives us something worth sharing with you.
What we both know now is that the body keeps score. The stress, the grief, the years of pushing through and the things that got ignored don’t disappear. They show up somewhere. In fat storage patterns, in hormonal imbalances, in fatigue that won’t budge and in illness that develops quietly over time.
Dis-ease becomes disease.
Normal isn’t the goal. If something doesn’t feel right, keep asking. Get the second opinion, the third, the fifth if that’s what it takes. Your body is telling you something, even when the test results say otherwise.
We’re not done with this conversation, not even close. We’re going to get into the practical side: what we do, how we’ve changed our home and environment and the specific things that have made the biggest difference, so stay tuned and keep pushing for answers.
Listen to Episode 04, Body Image, Gut Instincts and the Hormone Tests That Changed Everything, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Nothing in this post is medical advice. It’s our personal experience, shared in the hope that it might help someone ask better questions of their own health and seek answers.
Until next time,
