Provider Spotlight: Alyssa Tyler, MS, RD, LD

by Courtney Poling

Alyssa Tyler, MS, RD, LD, is a registered dietitian who started off her career working for the Cleveland Clinic as an outpatient dietitian. After working in the hospital for many years, she discovered the gap between patient care and the inability to see patients as often as she’d like. Alyssa’s own hormone imbalances and GI complications jump-started her passion for her profession. While visiting a functional medicine doctor, she knew better things were on the horizon for the entire medical community. 

Alyssa now works remotely from her home in Florida to help women take charge of their health. Through proper lab testing, she digs deep to address the true cause of what’s holding her clients back from reaching their full potential. Health is a multifaceted approach, and each system of the body is inextricably linked. Through individualized stress and lifestyle support, nutrition, supplementation, and exercise, Alyssa and her clients come up with individualized, realistic plans together, allowing the client to not only achieve results, but sustain them. 

Alyssa is currently in a 12-month functional nutrition certification program through Nutrition Dynamic to advance her career in the field. To find out more about Alyssa Tyler, visit her page on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssanoel_rd/

Watch our interview with Alyssa Tyler, MS, RD, LD:

TRANSCRIPT:

We all know we can’t treat just the symptoms. We have to understand why those things are happening. So, I recommend it to every practitioner that I come across. I do a lot of consults for other coaches with difficult clients, and that’s always my first question, is “Have you done a DUTCH?”

Meet Alyssa Tyler

So I, for the past three years, have been working for a company called T4E Systems, and I have recently made the decision to branch off on my own and make my own dream business of a functional nutrition practice. So, I want to talk a little bit about T4E, because that’s kind of what drove me, and gave me the confidence to step off, and it’s a fantastic company.

There are two dieticians on staff, myself and another young lady. We have a hormone specialist, we have a training specialist, a weight-loss coach, and then a mindset coach. So, it encompasses everything that a client would be looking for. So, if someone is just starting out with nutrition and changing their lifestyle habits, they would start off with someone, maybe a little bit more beginner, teaching them how to do everything. If they were coming in and seeing that they had some hormone imbalances, GI issues, thyroid issues, then they would go to two of the RDs or hormone specialists. So, we worked fantastic as a team to really just make sure that the client was getting exactly what they want. And that’s something that I continue with my own practice currently, is just making sure that I’m applying everything from a functional nutrition standpoint to really help my clients get to where they need to be.

And what got me into this field, a very untraditional route actually, I was a Spanish major in my undergrad, studied in Spain, had a focus on education, and went through my student teaching, decided it was not something that I saw myself doing, but absolutely, 100% saw myself doing something education related, had a passion for nutrition, and went back to school, got my master’s in nutrition, combined those two disciplines, and now, I just teach people all about nutrition. So that’s what, that’s what got me here and what kind of drove the passion to be where I am.

Why is hormone testing important to you?

I don’t think I have met one client yet, that has come to me, that does not have hormone imbalances. And so, it became something that was very near and dear to my heart because I went through so many of my own struggles and seeing a lot of different medical practitioners that really weren’t pointing me into the direction in which I wanted to go. I had been off of birth control for a period of years, really didn’t want to go back on it, wanted to do something a little bit more naturally, but also understand why all this was happening in the first place.

And that’s what got me so interested in the DUTCH Testing and, you know, the different mediums for hormone testing, the difference between serum and saliva and urine testing, because it’s all so applicable in so many different types of situations. So, I guess, my own medical history and then, just really seeing that need in my clients to make that a priority.

Why did you choose DUTCH?

I had to do a lot of self-study on my own, and it was one other dietitian in particular I had seen start posting on Instagram and honestly, it was so incredibly foreign to me when I first saw the different metabolic pathways, and just the different terms that were on there. It was way over my head. And I became so incredibly intrigued by this test that I reached out. She became my mentor, really taught me about the DUTCH Test® and now it’s one of the main tests that I utilize in my practice.

How have you incorporated DUTCH testing into your practice?

Any client that comes to me is required to fill out a questionnaire, it dives into things like hormone health, gut health, thyroid health, just everything that you can find on the spectrum. And so, if I have a client that’s really marking a lot of symptoms on this questionnaire that are hormone related, I usually have them do a DUTCH Test® right off the bat. So, it’s a baseline marker that I use.

What are you excited about in your practice?

I am back to school. So, I am going to get my one-year functional nutrition certification. So, I think that’s what is most exciting for me is just having that official title and gaining more knowledge to be able to help more people.

What do you like about DUTCH that you don’t see in other testing?

What I first started out doing was just blood-based testing, it was all I was really taught. And I saw a lot of limitations here, because blood-based tests it will tell us the “what”, what’s going on with someone’s hormones, you can see that someone’s estrogen’s high, you can see that someone’s progesterone is low, but it doesn’t tell you why.

And that’s the biggest difference between blood and saliva is now I can see the pathways, I can see specifically what’s going on with estrogen detox. I can have a clear plan to help my clients. Plus, it just reassures them, it reassures them that their symptoms are real, and that there’s a solution to their symptoms, and just has helped so much more to get a bigger picture, it’s so much more comprehensive. It helps with cortisol, because we know we can’t ignore stress levels when it comes to any systemic inflammation in the body.

So, I love that it teaches you so much about stress cortisol and cortisone, your hormones, organic acids, your neurotransmitters. It’s, it’s everything.

How does home testing and drop shipping benefit your patients?

I am more virtual, I do see a few clients here and there in person, but primarily, probably 95% virtual I think there’s something comforting about having someone do the tests in their home. I know from my personal experience, anytime I go to a doctor or go to a lab, I get extremely nervous. So, being able to do something in a comfortable setting, to have control over the situation, is a little bit more relaxed for the client.

What’s your approach to solving unique hormone-related issues?

I think any kind of androgen dominant symptoms have been really helpful to have DUTCH Tests® for, so, clients can go get lab work, see that their testosterone is normal, but we do the DUTCH Test® and we see that the metabolites are high. So, five alpha reductase being high, obviously, we can’t always see that on blood work, so that’s been helpful. I’ve had situations that have pointed out towards more autoimmune from having the DUTCH Tests® done, again, kind of pertaining to the testosterone metabolites, any kind of cortisol issues.

It’s, it’s funny, most of my clients think that they’re going to have high cortisol when they do test, because there’s such a negative connotation with the word cortisol that they are always surprised when they do the test, and a lot of them are in that burnout Stage Four HPA dysfunction and had no idea. So, those are some of the most common things that I see, but also with the estrogen dominance and really looking at the three different types of estrogen, and noting the liver detoxification pathways, I could not do that without a DUTCH Test®.

What changes have you seen in your patients after using the DUTCH Tests®?

I think there’s a lot of hesitation for people to go to doctors, just because we’re not always getting the answers that they’re looking for. So, it’s faith, faith in the medical community again, just knowing that there’s an answer to their symptoms. I think that’s what really stands out, that my clients tell me.

Why would you recommend the DUTCH Test® to other providers?

It’s helped so many of my clients, I can’t even begin to state how many it’s helped. Just being able to look at the “why”. We all know we can’t treat just the symptoms. We have to understand why those things are happening. So, I recommend it to every practitioner that I come across. I do a lot of consults for other coaches with difficult clients and that’s always my first question, is “Have you done a DUTCH?” Because we need to, we need to dive in deep, and we need to figure out why all this stuff is happening in the first place. So, I can’t say enough good things about this test.

What’s your favorite wellness advice you give to your patients?

Diet, diet is honestly everything. A lot of people always want to go to supplements to help, but if your liver detoxing process is not as it should because of high inflammation, then it’s going to cause things like sluggish estrogen detoxification, hormone imbalances are very much related to gut health. So, really concentrating on an anti-inflammatory, Mediterranean-based diet is a very common piece of advice that I give my clients.