The coach who fell in love with lab work
ABOUT SALLY
Hi, I'm Sally. I'm a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, founder of Empowered Health Consultants, and author of Feel Like Yourself Again. But the shortest version of my story is this: I'm a former attorney who fell in love with lab work — because learning to read my own labs is what gave me my life back.
Let me tell you how that happened.
It runs in the family
I come from a long line of doctors. My great-great-grandfather was an English pharmacist who immigrated to the U.S. by boat and earned his MD in 1880 from the school that would become the University of Texas Medical Branch — Texas's oldest medical school. There's been a well-respected Dr. Sykes in nearly every generation since. When my grandfather retired from medicine, he sat down and wrote a meticulously sourced genealogy of our family and titled it Faith in Education. That tells you just about everything about where I come from.
I'm not one of the doctors — I took the attorney route instead, Georgetown and then a law degree at UT Austin. But in my family, there was never a problem that couldn't be met with dedicated research and reasoned debate. That's the exact skill set I brought first to law, and now to functional medicine. No one who knows me was surprised when I switched tracks.
The wake-up call
Two things changed my course.
The first was losing my dad to Alzheimer's. He was gone by 67 — and if you've watched someone disappear to that disease, you know it takes them long before it takes them. I started reading everything I could find on what actually drives Alzheimer's, and that search led me to a short list of optimal lab ranges for protecting the brain. I'd spent my whole life thinking "normal" was the goal. Optimal was a revelation.
The second was my own body falling apart.
When my own labs were "normal"
In my 40s, I started gaining weight around my middle for the first time in my life. I was wiped out — the kind of exhaustion that made my old 6 a.m. gym habit unthinkable. My sleep unraveled. I craved sugar and carbs just to get through the afternoon, then crashed. I was puffy, bloated, foggy, irritable, and my hair was falling out in chunks. My libido? Gone.
So I did what you're supposed to do: I went to my doctor. He ran a few basic labs and told me everything was "normal for my age." I was just getting older. His prescription was an antidepressant and an anti-inflammatory for what he called IBS.
What no one mentioned: that the birth control pill I'd taken for years might be part of it. That I was likely in perimenopause. That my iron was dangerously low and my thyroid was barely working. That pulling gluten, dairy, or alcohol might help my mood, my gut, and my inflammation. That bioidentical hormones even existed.
I wasn't broken, and I wasn't imagining it. I just wasn't being compared to optimal ranges — and no one was looking for the root cause.
The same me, a few years apart. When I was sick, I was on the pill, hypothyroid, Type 2 diabetic, losing my hair, puffy, foggy, and exhausted — and my labs were "normal." After: off the pill, hormones replaced, on Armour thyroid, and Type 2 diabetes reversed. Nothing about me was broken; I just wasn't being measured against optimal.
Taking back the wheel
Around the same time, I was also diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I'd eat a single piece of fruit and watch my blood sugar spike to 250. I was on medication after medication, and none of it made me feel better.
So I got to work. I went low-carb and reversed my Type 2 diabetes. I found functional-medicine providers who would actually optimize my thyroid and hormones instead of shrugging at "normal." And I felt like myself again — better than myself, honestly.
Take frozen shoulder — that miserable, can't-reach-behind-you stiffness so many women hit in midlife. Mine started creeping in, and I'd already watched my mom, a baby boomer who was never offered hormones, lose mobility across her whole body. But midlife frozen shoulder is very often just a sign of dropping estrogen. I didn't need a shoulder replacement or cortisone shots (which actually weaken the joint over time) — I needed estrogen, the same estrogen my body made plenty of in my youth. I got enough of it, and my shoulder loosened right back up. I can fasten my own bra again, thank you very much.
That's the thing about optimal ranges: over and over, the fix wasn't a lifetime of managing symptoms — it was finding the actual root cause and correcting it. Once I'd lived that, I couldn't keep it to myself. So I trained formally as a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach through the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, to do for other people what took me years of stubborn, legal-brain research to piece together.
What I do now
For 15+ years, I've helped people across midlife decode their own labs and optimize their health across the six pillars: metabolic, hormones, thyroid, cardiovascular, nutrients, and immune. I specialize in the very things conventional medicine so o!en waves away — insulin resistance, stubborn weight, perimenopause and menopause, thyroid, low energy, brain fog, hair loss, and libido. We start with real food and lifestyle changes and targeted supplements, and when it makes sense, I help you understand your options — like bioidentical hormones, GLP-1 medications, and peptides — and connect you with a provider who'll actually help if your own won't. I am not a doctor, and I'll never pretend to be. What I am is the coach in your corner — the one who translates the numbers so you can walk into your provider's o"ice informed, curious, and confident. You are the CEO of your own health. My job is to hand you the information you need to keep your body in the blue.
My mission
Here's what drives me: functional medicine gave me my health back, but it's almost always cash-pay, which puts it out of reach for so many of the people who need it most. I don't believe understanding your own body should require a concierge doctor or a five-figure protocol. Most of the tools I teach cost little to nothing to start — so for the price of a book, or a free weekly email, this knowledge can be yours. Consider it my attempt to democratize it.
When I'm not reading lab results
I grew up roller-skating in Austin in the '80s, and you can still find me at Playland Skate Center today. I'm mom to two adult children, Jay and Ainsley, and wife to my wonderfully supportive husband, Jonathan. I could happily read medical journals all day (I know, I know) — but I do it so you don't have to.
Whatever brought you here, wherever you're starting from, it's never too late to take the first step. Good health is a journey, and I'd love to walk it with you.