I’m 42, and I feel like nobody warned me about this weird middle chapter.
It wasn’t like I woke up one day and everything was falling apart or something. It was more like at the start of the new year, I just felt…off. Like, why don’t I have any energy? Why do I feel “numb” to the world? Why does sex feel as exciting as washing the dishes? I felt like I was just dragging through my days. I didn’t feel like myself.
My energy stayed low no matter what I did. My PMS stopped feeling like PMS and started feeling like a medical event. I got close to passing out more than once, which is a fun little experience when you’re trying to act like a normal adult with a job and a life to live.
And then there was the libido situation. It didn’t “dip.” It disappeared. Like, not a little. Not “I’m tired.” I’m talking zero. Dead. Gone. At the beginning of 2025, my sex drive left the building and took my hormones with it. If Tom Hardy himself were to put his hand on my thigh and tell me to come back to his hotel room, I’d honestly feel more intrigued to put on my pajamas and binge-watch Your Friends & Neighbors.
I love my relationship. I’m attracted to my partner. Nothing about my feelings changed. My body just stopped participating. Which is a mindf*ck, because you start wondering what’s wrong with you. You start bargaining with yourself. You start Googling things at 11 p.m., and we all know that leads to “welp, I guess I’m going to die now.”
I tried all the online stuff, because of course I did. “Balance your hormones.” “Heal your gut.” “Cycle sync.” “Seed cycling.” Supplements with cute names and aggressive promises. Advice that basically boiled down to “sleep more and reduce stress,” which is the wellness version of telling someone with a flat tire to simply drive better.
None of it worked. And the worst part was how generic it all felt. Everything sounded like it was written for a woman who exists in theory. I needed to know what was happening inside my body, specifically. I needed a plan that wasn’t a dart throw.
“Then came the genetic testing. They mailed me a kit, I did an easy finger prick, and I waited. When those results were ready, I was even more surprised than I already was.”
That’s how I ended up doing bloodwork and genetic testing and basically handing science a flashlight and saying, “Please. Go look around. Tell me what’s broken.”
I’m not saying this because I think every person needs a genetic report the size of a novella. I’m saying it because so many women hit this age bracket and get trapped in the same loop: you feel wrong, your life keeps moving, and you get handed advice that feels like it was copied and pasted from a wellness Instagram account run by a 24-year-old that definitely hasn’t had to pluck multiple coarse hairs from her chin.
So I opted into a six-month DNA-tailored health program through 10X Health. It included deep bloodwork and gene testing, and my mindset was simple. I wanted numbers. I wanted context. I wanted something more useful than “you’re fine” when I didn’t feel fine.
The blood draw itself was quick, done at a local lab here in Savannah. No scariness. Just a needle and a normal day. The results came back about five days later and I was honestly shook.
My thyroid was struggling. My testosterone might as well have been nonexistent. My estrogen was too high. My cholesterol came back sky-high. My iron was extremely low. My magnesium was low. My cortisol was so high it literally wasn’t even on the chart anymore. And mind you, I considered myself someone who ate healthy and worked out a few times a week. I thought I was doing “all the things.”
It’s a weird emotional moment when lab work confirms what you’ve been feeling. First, there’s a little relief, because, yay, you’re not imagining it. Then the fear arrives, because okay, so what now? And also, why did it take me paying for a deeper look to get to this point? Why does so much healthcare still feel like it requires you to be actively falling apart before anyone takes out the flashlight? Why does it seem like you need to do the detective work?
Then came the genetic testing. They mailed me a kit, I did an easy finger prick, and I waited. When those results were ready, I was even more surprised than I already was.
My genes showed a high sensitivity to carbohydrates. My caffeine metabolism had basically come back defective, which explained why coffee on an empty stomach every morning was spiking my cortisol so badly. My report said I struggled to regulate homocysteine, which is pretty important because high homocysteine can strain the cardiovascular system. There were a lot of variants flagged, a lot of “this pathway isn’t doing what it should,” and it was genuinely surprising to see how much of what I wrote off as “this is normal, right?” might have been my biology trying to scream at me from the inside out.
Quick disclaimer, because I can hear the internet warming up its engines. Genes aren’t destiny. Genetic reports don’t predict your future with perfect certainty. But they can give you something most people never get: clarity on why certain “healthy” habits don’t work the same way for everybody, and why you can follow the generic advice and still feel like trash.
From there, the plan turned into a grind. A very unsexy, very un-Instagrammable grind.
I went on a strict supplement protocol. I started taking about 12 supplements daily, like B-Complex, DIMPRO, zinc, selenium, berberine, and some other stuff. I cut out caffeine completely, which wasn’t terrible. I realized it was more the routine of it all for me, so I switched to decaf and didn’t really notice any difference in my energy. If anything, I had more of it. And I really started upping my whole foods game. Not the store, like actual whole foods.
I also decided to start working with a trainer. Not because I wanted a “new body” storyline, but because I wanted to see how much I could change inside and out if I treated my health like the number one priority in my life. What could happen if I did that?
It was tedious. It required planning. It required consistency even when I wanted to quit. It required me to stop pretending that self-care is always fun. Sometimes self-care is annoying. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it’s choosing the thing you don’t feel like doing because your body has made it clear that the old way isn’t working anymore.
“I could feel those changes. I slept better. My energy improved. My body felt less reactive.”
In early October, I visited a REVIV Global clinic in New York and did a DNA-tailored IV drip that included NAC, glutathione, B-complex, magnesium, alpha lipoic acid, and vitamin C (all sent over as recommended by 10X Health). I left feeling amazing. Clear. Energized. Like I could freaking take anything on.
That “reset” feeling is part of what makes modern wellness so seductive. It feels like proof. It feels like an instant reward for effort. However, it’s important to know that “mega-doses” like that aren’t feasible (or safe…or cheap) to do on the reg.
But I also wanted to ask the obvious question: what’s the line between optimization and overcorrection?
I put that to Brandon Dawson, co-founder of 10X Health. He didn’t sugarcoat it. That “reset button” feeling, he said, is “pure gold,” but “megadoses of vitamins or hormone tweaks aren’t toys.” His whole point was guardrails: test, adjust, follow up. And yes, he thinks this is the direction healthcare is heading. “People think this is some sci-fi, 20-year-away thing,” he told me. “It’s already happening right now, just not for the masses yet.”
That last bit is important. Right now, the most advanced personalization often sits behind cost, access, and a certain type of person who has time to make “health” a project. A lot of women don’t have that. They have kids. They have jobs. They have aging parents. They have stress that can’t be reduced with a bath. But Dawson stresses that these tests and supplements are becoming more and more accessible for everyone as they go mainstream.
And, it’s Dawson’s bigger point that landed with me: the model is shifting from reactive to predictive. He put it bluntly. “Traditional healthcare [is] built on treating problems after they show up,” he said. “We’re building the model that prevents the problem before it exists.” This is the type of healthcare I want to see more of. America’s not a big fan of that model.
I also asked him about genetic privacy, because that’s the part that makes people nervous for good reason. Your DNA isn’t a cute data point. It’s your most personal information. Dawson told me, “Your genetic data is your property, not ours.” He added, “We don’t sell it, we don’t share it.” That’s the promise companies in this space need to make very clearly, and it’s the part people should interrogate hard before handing over anything.
Six months after I started, I did follow-up bloodwork. The results showed measurable improvement. My cortisol came way down into a normal range. My iron levels regulated. My B12 returned to normal. My cholesterol dropped a little, though I’m still exploring whether it’s partly hereditary, and I plan to do more testing.
I could feel those changes. I slept better. My energy improved. My body felt less reactive. Over the six months, I lost around nine pounds and over two inches from my waist. My clothes fit differently. My body composition completely changed in a very noticeable way.
And then there was the one thing I wanted fixed the most. My libido still wasn’t back.
And my testosterone dropped even more, to a level that felt scary on paper and frustrating in real life. That’s the part nobody sells you when they talk about “optimizing.” Progress isn’t always a clean before-and-after. Sometimes it’s a win in one direction and a new question in another. Sometimes it’s you realizing that women’s hormone issues still don’t get treated like the serious quality-of-life issues they are.
Because when your sex drive disappears, it’s not just “sex.” It’s connection. It’s identity. It’s confidence. It’s the ability to feel like yourself in your own body. And the way women get brushed off about this stuff is infuriating, especially when it’s happening to so many of us at the exact same time in life.
What I’m left with after this six-month experiment isn’t a miracle story. It’s actually something more useful.
I’m left with proof that “self-care” can’t be the whole plan when the system stays vague. Self-care is important, sure, but self-care without information becomes self-blame. It becomes another way women get told just to handle things. It becomes “try harder,” sold as wellness.
I’m also left with a bigger question that feels like the real point of all of this.
“But if you’re a woman reading this who feels like her body turned on her, I want you to hear me clearly. You’re not crazy. You’re not alone.”
What happens when healthcare becomes truly personal? Not “here’s a generic hormone panel.” Not “try this supplement that works for most people.” I mean healthcare that starts with your baseline, your genetics, your biomarkers, your lived symptoms, and a plan designed around you. As Dawson put it, “Health doesn’t scale in a cookie-cutter way—but it does scale when you make it individualized, measurable, and actionable.”
That future could be empowering. It could also get pretty damn creepy if genetic data becomes another asset that companies own or monetize. Both things can be true. That’s why patient ownership and transparency can’t be optional.
But if you’re a woman reading this who feels like her body turned on her, I want you to hear me clearly. You’re not crazy. You’re not alone. And you’re not asking for too much when you want answers that match your actual body instead of a generic template.
I’m still chasing the libido and testosterone part. That’s my next chapter. I’m still in the middle of it, and honestly, that might be the most relatable part of all.
Because this age isn’t about becoming a brand-new person, it’s about getting your body back from the fog. It’s about refusing to accept “just live with it” as medical advice. It’s about stopping the guessing game.
I used to think I needed more discipline. Now I think I just need more information. I want the receipts, the context, the follow-up, and the retest. If your body changed the rules on you, that doesn’t mean you’re broken. It just means you haven’t found the right answer for your body yet.
The post DNA-Tailored Healthcare Is the Future—So I Decided to Try It appeared first on VICE.
