If I knew then what I know now

The girl in the plaster casts

From sixth grade until I left high school, I broke a bone every single year. I once told my pediatric orthopedist that as long as I was around, his daughter’s college tuition was covered. Add in the stomach aches, migraines, and body aches, and there was rarely a time something didn’t hurt. My doctors and family dismissed it all as just having a “nervous stomach.” Some people even said I was always in a cast or looking pathetic for attention. Today, I think that kind of dismissal would be recognized much differently. Anyone who knows what an introvert I am can appreciate the comedy in that; attention was the last thing I wanted. What I wanted was for it to stop, and for that to happen, I needed to understand the why of it all.

“Everyone’s favorite”

I grew up as one of seven children born within a very short window of time. In a family that size, individual needs have a way of disappearing into the crowd. There were years when an ice cream cake was bought for my birthday because it was “everyone’s favorite.” Not everyone’s. I was lactose intolerant, and each time, even a tiny piece of my own cake left me violently ill.

Years later, shortly before my mother died, she shared her holiday lasagna recipe with a group of us, and I was stunned to learn it had always contained ricotta cheese to make it extra delicious. Suddenly, the mystery of why I was sick after every holiday meal was solved. I also carried a long list of severe food allergies that no one else in the family shared. My body had been yelling at me my whole life. I just didn’t understand its language and couldn’t hear it over everyone else’s voices.

Doing everything “right”

After having children, life became so hectic that I often ate whatever was convenient, without thinking about what it was or the quality of the food. I never realized how much I could overeat without even thinking about it. At work, I’d put candy and other garbage in my mouth over and over, hardly noticing what I was doing to myself. Over time, the weight crept up on me until I was in a size 20, and I developed the wellness issues that came with it. Being winded walking up a flight of stairs. Having my hips, knees, and ankles hurt all the time. Even becoming out of breath when speaking in meetings at work.

Determined to turn things around, I tried to do everything “right.” I followed the food pyramid, experimented with new nutrition advice, and committed to the popular diets, trending workouts, and recommended supplements. Still, I felt exhausted, frustrated, and stuck. The problem wasn’t that those plans didn’t work for anyone. It was that they weren’t designed for my body.

The question I couldn’t stop asking

For years, I even believed the “nervous stomach” story myself, because I’d been told it so many times that the gaslighting became my reality. But once I stepped back and took control of my own agency, I realized something: I am not a nervous or anxious person at all. Nothing actually makes me nervous. So there clearly had to be a different answer. I often said I thought I had a health condition they just hadn’t discovered yet.

For decades, I turned research and data science into actionable business decisions for executives and helped them make a lot of money. With my master’s degree in statistics and operations research, I built a career managing the extraction of critical information from extremely large volumes of data. In 2015, I discovered volumes of genetic research. I was astonished by how much of the science already existed, buried in thousands of published studies. That discovery started the journey that brought me to where I am today. I first dug into the data to better understand why medications caused so many problems for me and my loved ones. I even completed coursework toward pharmacogenomics certification. Then I moved into exploring how genes shape the way our bodies handle food, exercise, sleep, and so many other things, so I could finally understand why my body responded the way it did.

What my DNA finally told me

So much of what I learned was about a body I thought I already knew. My reports showed that my body simply doesn’t make enough of what it needs to easily digest red meat. I love red meat, but every time I gave in and ate it, I spent the night doubled over with a heating pad pressed to my stomach. So, I spent most of my life avoiding it, without ever knowing why.

I also learned that my saliva is missing something it needs to start breaking down vegetable protein before I even swallow, so the plant proteins I was told to eat instead were making my whole system miserable from start to finish. What I learned through my own reports was that if I chose very lean pieces of red meat, I avoided the evenings of being doubled over. These days I cook my plant proteins differently to give my body a head start, and my whole system thanks me for it.

Even my relationship with food, the mindless eating I’d never questioned, was written in my DNA. Until I saw my relationship-with-food reports, I didn’t understand it at all. Now the food beside me while I work has changed too. Instead of pretzels, cupcakes, and marshmallows, it’s avocados, sunflower seeds, chicken, and peaches. Same busy days, different fuel. If you’ve ever been told it’s all in your head or that you just have no willpower, you know exactly what that moment of understanding felt like: validation, and a plan. The answers to the “why” questions I had always sought were finally coming around.

The proof I never wanted

Then came the hardest time in my story, and it happened while I was building this very product. I had surgery to fuse three lower levels of my spine. At that time, they told me I had very severe osteoporosis. Five months later, I fell and severely collapsed three vertebrae at the base of my rib cage. Four months after that, I broke a rib. Six months later, I broke my tailbone, and now they have discovered two more compressed vertebrae above the other three, with no traumatic event. All of this happened in 19 months. I am now permanently disabled and have to be cautious with every move.

When I saw my own micronutrient score, I almost wanted to cry. My chance of calcium and vitamin D deficiency is off the charts. Because the score comes from my DNA, it would have said exactly the same thing when I was in sixth grade, or in my thirties, or the day before my surgery. The exercise, injury susceptibility, and recovery report I’m building now tells the same story: my scores for fractures, back problems, and thin bones are as high as they go.

The girl in the plaster casts finally had her answer. It was never nerves, and it was never for attention. It was written in my genes the whole time.

What life looks like now

Over the last two years, simply by choosing whole foods my body can actually use, I’ve gone from that size 20 to a size 2. Protein was my biggest struggle for a long time; eating it caused so much pain that I survived on eggs and protein shakes. With my macro report, I finally know what has been causing that pain all along, and I have real strategies for dealing with it. I can eat steak again, as long as it’s a lean, thin cut.

After a childhood I can only describe as miserable, I can finally say something I couldn’t say for most of my life: I love my life. My two children and I are a close, tight family. With them, I look at everything I can, because I want their “why” answered in years, not decades. Even with the musculoskeletal issues I still deal with, the why has been answered, and I am working on an informed plan with my primary care provider.

My noble purpose

Learning how much our genetics can teach us, and how much good that knowledge can do, has given me a sense of direction and purpose. My entire adult life, I’ve had one goal underneath everything else: I want to help people. Especially people like me who assume there is nothing they can do about feeling miserable. Someone once called it my “noble purpose,” and the name stuck with me.

That is what Intrinsic Genomics is about. I started the company in 2023, not to discover new science, but to make existing science understandable, personal, and actionable. It is about putting tools and practical next steps into the hands of the people who need them, long before they might otherwise be able to chase these answers through expensive and scarce specialists. Your DNA holds far more answers than we have unlocked so far, and the next reports are already on their way.

That includes the people doing the helping. Providers and clinicians shouldn’t have to be genomics or epigenetics experts to guide their clients based on DNA results. Intrinsic Genomics is designed to be easy enough to use that they don’t need to be experts.

No one should have to wait decades for their own “if I knew then what I know now” moment.

Maria