What Your Symptoms Are Really Telling You – An Interview with Linette Gonzalez Alarcon

Linette Gonzalez is a Nurse Practitioner, Health Coach, and Yoga Instructor who approaches health through clinical and integrative lenses. Her work is centered on helping people understand the patterns behind their symptoms while combining evidence-based medicine with nutrition, lifestyle, and whole-person care. In this interview, Linette explores what it means to look beyond “normal” lab results, why sequence matters in healing, and how her personal experience with fibromyalgia shaped the way she listens to patients.

Linette Gonzalez Alarcon, Family Nurse Practitioner & Health Coach

What does integrative health look like in practice for someone who has tried everything and still does not feel like themselves?

Integrative health, in practice, means I stop treating you as a list of separate complaints and start treating you as one connected system. Most people who come to me have already done the conventional route. They have seen a primary care provider, a gastroenterologist, maybe a rheumatologist or an endocrinologist. Each specialist looked at their own organ and said, "This part looks fine." But sometimes no one has stepped back and asked why the fatigue, bloating, anxiety, and joint pain began around the same time.

So, the first thing that changes is the questions. I want to understand what was happening in your life when the symptoms began, how you sleep, how you digest, how you handle stress, how you move, and what your labs looked like over time rather than on one day.

As a Nurse Practitioner, I believe conventional medicine has an essential role. We need to identify and treat disease, rule out serious conditions, and use appropriate testing and treatment when indicated. Integrative care adds another layer by asking what factors may be contributing to how someone feels and how we can support the body’s ability to function well. You do not have to choose between the two.

To me, integrative care is about connecting the dots, looking at the whole person, and creating a personalized plan based on what we find. Sometimes the first step toward feeling like yourself again is finally understanding that your symptoms are not random. They are information.

When someone’s labs look normal, but they still feel unwell, what do you look at next?

"Labs are a snapshot. Your symptoms are the film."

“Normal” is not necessarily the end of the conversation. A lab report usually tells us whether a result falls within a reference range based on a population, and the general population is not especially healthy. It does not, by itself, tell us the whole story of an individual’s health.

First, I want to make sure we are not overlooking an underlying medical condition. I consider the person’s symptoms, history, medications, and clinical presentation, and whether additional evaluation or testing is clinically appropriate. For example, a thyroid panel that is technically in range, paired with fatigue, cold hands, and hair loss, deserves a more comprehensive evaluation, not a shrug.

Beyond that, I look at patterns over time. How are they sleeping? How are they eating? How is their digestion? What happens to their energy throughout the day? What stressors are present? How much are they moving? What medications or supplements are they taking? When did the symptoms begin, and what was happening in their life at that time?

I pay attention to the person, not just the number. Two people can have similar lab results and feel completely different. I never want “your labs are normal” to mean “nothing is wrong with you.” Sometimes it simply means we need to broaden the conversation.

How did your own experience with fibromyalgia change the way you listen to patients whose symptoms do not fit neatly into a diagnosis?

My experience with fibromyalgia profoundly changed the way I listen. Being diagnosed in the past taught me what it feels like to sit on the other side of the desk. When your symptoms are difficult to explain or do not fit neatly into a diagnostic box, you learn how frustrating it is to know that something is not right while struggling to communicate exactly what is happening.

It also changed how I see a diagnosis. In the conventional world, a diagnosis can be incredibly useful, it gives us a framework for understanding symptoms and guiding treatment. I respect that, and I use it. But I see it as a starting point, not the whole story. Two people with the same label can have completely different drivers behind it, and a person without a label can still be very unwell.

That experience taught me that listening is not a soft skill, it is part of clinical care. Nurses know this. Those of us who worked at the bedside learned to listen and to see the whole person, not just the chart. Patients may not have the perfect medical vocabulary, but their story matters, and part of my job is helping them translate what they are experiencing into something we can investigate.

My own journey made me more curious and more compassionate. I want patients to feel they have a partner willing to look at the bigger picture with them, rather than dismissing something because it does not fit. Symptoms are complex and multifactorial, and as clinicians, we need to consider everything.

Where do you think the root cause conversation becomes too simplistic in wellness?

I think the “root cause” conversation becomes simplistic when it suggests every health concern has a single cause that can be identified and fixed with a single intervention. It also becomes oversimplified when "root cause" turns into a cliché for sales. If the answer to every health problem is the same supplement, cleanse, or restrictive diet, that is not root-cause thinking. Believe it or not, many practitioners in the wellness space still try to “solve” migraines simply by recommending magnesium. Human biology is much more complex than that.

Multiple factors can influence health: genetics, environment, nutrition, sleep, stress, physical activity, medications, medical conditions, relationships, and many others. Sometimes we can identify a clear driver. Other times, we are looking at several factors interacting with one another. I think of it as a bucket, there may be multiple factors filling it, and eventually the bucket overflows. The goal is to understand what is contributing to that overflow. That is why I prefer to think in terms of patterns and contributing factors rather than one isolated cause.

For me, the root-cause approach means asking better questions and being willing to look deeper while staying grounded in clinical judgment and the best evidence we have. It also means being willing to think outside the box, because science does not yet have all the answers. It is about expanding the lens, not replacing one oversimplified explanation with another.

How do you decide when an integrative approach is appropriate and when someone needs further medical evaluation?

This is where having a clinical background matters most, because safety comes first. I don't see integrative care and medical care as opposing approaches. In many cases, they should work together.

Before I ever talk about lifestyle, I ask whether anything in front of me needs to be medically ruled out. Unintentional weight loss, blood in the stool, night sweats, a new severe headache, chest pain, neurological changes, a lump, or rapidly progressing symptoms are not integrative health coaching conversations. They are "you need to be seen, and soon" conversations, and I say so directly. That is why assessment and careful listening are the foundation of the coach-client relationship.

Once we've addressed urgent or significant medical concerns, an integrative approach can help us see the broader picture. Nutrition, sleep, movement, stress management, lifestyle habits, and other supportive strategies can be valuable components of a person's overall health plan.

Sometimes both need to happen at the same time. Someone can have a medical diagnosis and still benefit from improving their nutrition, sleep, physical activity, and stress resilience.

To me, good integrative care is not about avoiding conventional medicine. It is about knowing when each tool is appropriate and making sure the person receives comprehensive care that is both safe and individualized.

Why does sequence matter in your 5 R's of Cellular Restoration and Holobiome Roadmap?

I would change this question to something less specific (options below):

• Why does sequence matter in your holistic approach? Or in your holistic health coaching approach?

• Why is it important to take a step-by-step approach when addressing someone’s health concerns?

• Why does the order in which you address health matter so much in your approach?

"Holistic care is not about doing more, it is about doing what is appropriate, in the right order, at the right time, for the individual."

I believe the body works as an interconnected system, so the order in which we address different aspects of health makes a meaningful difference. I learned this by being my own first patient. When I finally decided to heal, I did not start with a protocol, I started by being kind to myself and calming my nervous system. A body constantly under stress has a harder time repairing and regulating. Once I created more safety and stability, the rest became possible.

Hence, I prefer a step-by-step approach rather than changing everything at once. Sometimes people do too much, changing their diet, adding multiple supplements, starting an exercise program, and addressing several symptoms at once. When something improves or gets worse, it becomes difficult to understand what actually made the difference.

In addition, I constantly see a mistake in practice: people start at the end. They buy the probiotics, the adaptogens, and the methylated vitamins, then wonder why nothing changes, when they never removed what was actually causing the damage in the first place, whether it is an inflammatory diet, a chronic infection, environmental toxins, or stress.

So, I start with the foundations, identifying potential contributors, supporting nutrition and digestion, improving sleep and recovery, addressing lifestyle factors, and making changes that are realistic for the individual. From there, we gradually build, based on how the body responds. For me, holistic care is not about doing more, it is about doing what is appropriate, in the right order, at the right time, for the individual.

For someone dealing with fatigue, brain fog, and digestive issues, what are the first patterns you would ask them to examine?

I would start by stepping back rather than immediately focusing on one symptom. Fatigue, brain fog, and digestive complaints can have many possible causes, so the first step is understanding the person’s individual history and overall picture. Before I change anything, I ask people to observe three patterns.

The first is timing and the relationship between symptoms. When does the energy crash, and what happened in the hours before it? What happens after meals? I look at digestion as a daily report: bloating, bowel patterns, food triggers, and whether certain foods seem to affect how they feel the next day. I also look at sleep and stress. Are they waking during the night, relying on caffeine to get through the day, or feeling wired but exhausted? These patterns can give us clues about blood sugar regulation, digestion, sleep, and nervous-system stress. I also want to understand the timeline, whether symptoms began after an illness, medication, major stress, or dietary change, and what medications and supplements are in the picture.

Honest observation turns “I feel terrible” into a pattern we can work with. It tells us where to start instead of guessing. My goal is to understand the individual first and create a safe, personalized plan rather than applying a one-size-fits-all protocol.

What does “health is more than the absence of symptoms” mean to you personally?

To me, "health is more than the absence of symptoms" means that feeling nothing wrong is not proof that nothing is wrong. Many chronic diseases develop quietly over years, sometimes decades, before the first obvious symptom appears. Insulin resistance can develop for years before blood sugar rises. Autoimmune conditions begin developing long before they are diagnosed or show up on routine testing. Blood vessels change silently. By the time symptoms appear, the underlying process is often well established.

That is why I do not accept "I feel fine" or "my labs are normal" as the end of the conversation, particularly when someone is eating poorly, sleeping badly, not moving, and running on chronic stress. The body gives subtle signals long before it produces a diagnosis: changes in energy, mood, sleep, digestion, sugar cravings, or a lab value gradually drifting toward the edge of the reference range year after year. Those signs aren't a disease, but they indicate something is out of balance.

Personally, I lived for years thinking I was healthy, and I was proud of it. I never realized that the brain fog I experienced as a child was an early signal that something was not right. When I finally looked back over my whole life, I could see patterns that had been there for decades.

That is what the absence of symptoms can hide. Real health is not simply having nothing that hurts or nothing that has been diagnosed, it is the body functioning well, maintaining balance, and having the resilience to adapt before small imbalances become bigger problems.

What is one thing you want people who have been told everything looks normal to understand about their health?

I want them to understand that their experience matters, and that they have a right to advocate for their own health. If your tests come back clear, but you still do not feel well, that is not a reason to ignore what you are experiencing. It is also not a reason to assume something mysterious or catastrophic is being missed. It is an opportunity to pause, reassess, and ask better questions.

Start with your story, because it holds information no test can. Then become an active participant in your healthcare. Ask why a test is being ordered, ask what the results actually mean, ask what has been ruled out, what has not been evaluated, and whether other factors are worth considering. Question things, not because you should distrust your providers, but because you deserve to understand your health and be part of the decision-making process. If the person in front of you is not curious about those questions, find someone who is. Remember that you do not have to choose between conventional medicine and an integrative approach, both have a place.

I was once told my pain was in my head, and it took me years to stop believing it. You do not have to wait that long. Your symptoms are information. Learning to read that information, asking questions, and advocating for yourself is how you take your health back.

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